


Various Storms

by MsVox



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam is just doing his best, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Brief body horror, Canon Era, Canon Universe, Canon-Compliant until it isn’t, Canon-Typical Violence, Demi-sexual Keith, Descriptions of Captivity, Feels, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Grief, Keith is a spitting cat, M/M, Mild Gore, Missing Scenes, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Pining, Pre-Kerberos Mission, S1 to S8, Shiro’s Illness, Shiro’s pov, Slow Burn, Unrequited, difficult conversations, eventually, keith is bad at feelings, keith’s pov, shiro is a dork, this man is sick, trials and tribulations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-01-26 05:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 89,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21369121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsVox/pseuds/MsVox
Summary: At sixteen, Shiro's world ends with a diagnosis.At ten, Keith's world ends with a phone call.This is just the beginning for both of them._____A re-telling of pretty much the whole story, from before the start to after the end.
Relationships: (but it's pretty secondary), Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 184
Kudos: 147





	1. Vector

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was just going to be my own little project for my own entertainment. An exercise in taking canon and filling in all the cracks. My rough of this now has a chapter count of 10+ and a word count of over 50K and I'm not even halfway done, so I figured f*** it, let's post this thing.
> 
> This whole idea grew out of the nagging question, 'What A-type personality would produce such a sweet, staggeringly over-achieving and self-sacrificing boy like Shiro?' His entire backstory then plopped into my head, fully formed. Keith's long hard trek from overlooked stray to right hand man to team leader plopped in right alongside it. It will take these boys a long while, but they'll both get there.
> 
> A lot of this is written already, but it needs editing and--in case anyone noticed the five year gap since I last posted any fic--life is busy. So I'm going to try to stick to a biweekly posting schedule for each chapter. I'll do my best!
> 
> A very effusive and never-ending thank you to Sarah, my wonderful beta and the only reason this is even happening. You're the best. Like seriously, just the best.

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**1: Vector**

_And the air was full_   
_Of various storms and saints_   
_Praying in the street_   
_As the banks began to break_   
_And I’m in the throes of it_   
_Somewhere in the belly of the beast_

*

Shiro can’t even pronounce the name of it, though his doctor and the two specialists who came from off base have already repeated it to him several times. They’re being very sympathetic, but that hasn’t lessened the damage of it, the diagnosis dropping like a bomb. Shiro can feel the crater opening up inside him, blowing a hole in his life.

His father pulls him into his side, gripping him so hard, so reflexively, that there will be bruises. Shiro grips back, held together by his father’s arm around him, so desperate for any kind of hold against the enormity of this.

His mother doesn’t reach for him, doesn’t even say anything. She just sits there, habitually unbending even now, as stark and rigid as ever in her uniform. Then, abruptly, she curls over herself—all those crisp lines ruined—and she bursts into tears. 

It’s like watching a building suddenly collapse.

Shiro’s never, ever seen his mother cry before. He hardly imagined it was even possible. The sound of her sobbing is so unfamiliar, so jarring, it makes everything suddenly and sharply unreal. 

_This can’t be happening_.

After that, Shiro tries to process what they’re saying about how the symptoms will progress, what the next step is, what treatments are available, how he can keep up with his high school courses as things get worse—but he can barely take in the words, a bubble of rage rising up in him, blocking his thoughts. When he can’t take it anymore, he doesn’t even excuse himself, just twists out of his father’s grip and all but runs out of the room.

Furious with everything, he flees until he hits sunlight and fresh air, and then throws himself down on the ground when he can’t go any further. He refuses even to cry, bites his cheek hard and stares up at the sparse clouds, dry-eyed and tasting blood.

He’s seething with an anger so bright and hot and seizing that every breath actually hurts. He doesn’t care that he’s lying on the tiny strip of lawn between the parking lot and the ambulance lane. He dares someone to come tell him to move, dares someone to tell him that anything matters right now. He rips the grass up between his fingers, claws the dirt under his finger nails, can’t stop thinking _this isn’t fair, this isn’t fair, this isn’t—_

He stares at the sky for a long time, so long that his eyes start to sting with it. His vision, and his mind, fill with blue. His chest slowly unclenches, his breathing slowly eases, and the tumult in his mind slowly dies down. Without the anger he feels empty and aching, numb with growing dread.

The slight, insistent tingling in two of the fingertips of his right hand could even be pleasant, if he doesn’t think about the fact that this is what brought him here in the first place. The sensation is still diffuse, and it won’t become pain and spasms for many years, they’d told him. There’s no question, they’d insisted, that it will eventually. This early diagnosis doesn’t give them that many more options—there are so few options—but it does give him time to prepare, they’d said. He’d been lucky that they’d caught the signs at all at this early stage. The disease is progressive and irreversible and rare, they’d said, and there is no cure.

He’s going to weaken and wither and then before he’s even middle aged he’s going to—

_No_, he’s not thinking about that.

An airplane creeps into view, moving inexorably across the sky, impossibly far up and driven steadily by twin jet engines. He wishes he could be up there, in all that blue, wishes he could be free of the weight that feels like it’s anchoring him to the dirt, burying him already.

He aches to fly, so fiercely that it finally drags a sob out of his chest.

*

Keith gets off the old rickety bus at the crossroads like usual and walks down the dusty lane until he gets to their simple little shack-house. His father isn’t home, but that’s normal. Sometimes people look at him oddly when he mentions that he’s often home alone, but he’s ten already and he can take care of himself. Besides, his dad works hard and works late and there’s no getting around that. Keith let’s himself in with the key hidden under the red paving stone near the door, dropping his backpack in its usual spot against the side of the couch and wandering into the kitchen.

In the fridge, there’s a big covered bowl of leftovers with a note on it—‘_Be home later Buddy, eat up_’—so Keith puts the note between his teeth and carries the heavy bowl carefully up to the lip of the counter and then maneuvers it into the microwave. While it spins and whirs, he goes to his room. He tucks the note into the box on his bookshelf with all the other notes and then reaches under his low bed to pull out the cloth bundle.

It’s his favourite possession, his most prized thing, and he unwinds the material to bring out the knife.

He never ever gets tired of looking at it, studying it, though he doesn’t play with it, doesn’t pretend to use it like a weapon. The one time he’d actually been pretending to fight with it, intent on cutting the air in a way he was sure he’d seen in a movie once, his father had caught him at it. He hadn’t scolded him or told him it wasn’t safe, nor had he come forward to guide his hand and correct his form. His father had just looked… distant, and so sad, and Keith had never had to heart to hold it and wield it like that again, even when his father wasn’t home.

Keith doesn’t realize that he’s been staring at his reflection in the blade until the microwave beeps.

He eats at the table like he’s been told, but he keeps the knife with him.

Later, after he finishes his homework and re-wraps the knife to put it away, he turns on the TV and waits. Sometimes it takes his father ages to get home, but Keith would rather be here when he does than be in his own bed and maybe miss greeting him. Like he often does, Keith falls asleep on the couch with the TV still on.

He wakes up much later and it’s already dark out. His dad was supposed to be home before nightfall, wasn’t he? 

“Dad?” he calls out, just in case his father didn’t want to wake him, but there’s no one else in the house.

He gets up and checks the stove clock, his stomach sinking when he sees that it’s already after nine. His dad has never been this late, not unless there was a real emergency. His heart thumping a little in his chest, he grabs the phone and dials the number for dispatch by heart. He knows he’s not supposed to call unless it’s really important, but Shauna is nice and doesn’t ever give him trouble for checking up on his dad when he’s worried.

“County fire station,” she says.

“Um,” he says, and he hears her rush of breath into the receiver.

“Keith? Lord, Keith is that you?”

“Yes ma’am,” he says, feeling a rush of unease at her tone, “I just — I wanted to know if my dad’s still there?” 

The unease yawns into fear when she doesn’t answer him. Keith knows her voice more than he knows her face, but he’s always liked her no-nonsense manner. He’s never known her not to speak frankly. Her silence is alarming. _Wrong_.

“Shauna…?”

“…Oh child,” she breathes, unsteady, and it’s this that finally makes his eyes prick with tears.

“What’s—where’s my dad?”

“Keith, listen to me. Can you do that?” She doesn’t continue until he chokes out an affirmative sound. “The Chief’s on his way now. He’s coming to your house, and he’s going to tell you what happened.”

“_Why?_” he almost yells, “What happened?” 

“There was a fire in Old Creek today. Your dad responded. It’s… It’s not right to hear the rest from me,” she says softly, “I need you to stay on the line, sweetheart. Stay with me until the Chief—”

But then there’s the sound of a vehicle on the driveway and Keith drops the phone with a clatter. For a second he thinks it’s his dad’s truck and his heart lurches in relief, but he hears — no, that’s more than one set of tires, and his dad’s headlights never shone through the front window like that, not at that angle. It’s not his dad, it’s _not_ his dad. For a second, he’s frozen, doesn’t want to go outside, doesn’t want to know. But then he rushes forward, wrenches open the front door, wet eyes blurring in the sudden flood of light.

Later, he’ll remember how he’d cannoned into someone’s legs, how they’d had to grab him to stop him from kicking, how he couldn’t get enough breath, how the air had smelled faintly of smoke and how everyone’s voice shook when they spoke to him. He’ll remember how he’d sobbed into a scratchy woollen uniform for so long that he fell asleep. 

*

Shiro’s mother is a Squad Commander Second Class, in charge of hundreds of sailors on multiple ships. She’s been deployed all around the Pacific for the JMSDF and even for the UC. She’s always been the tireless one, ever-ready, the one who his father likes to joke doesn’t understand the difference between fun and training. 

Shiro’s never been able to keep pace with her on a hike, never known her to sleep in, has never been able to distract her from anything or convince her to change her mind. He’s seen her stand her ground on the listing deck of an aircraft carrier in a squall, saw her throw a regional judo champion straight onto their back three bouts in a row, even watched her break up a fight and then wear the black eye to her personnel meetings the next day.

She’s the one who always cared about legacy, who always talked about the people in their family tree like they were still watching him and would have opinions about his life choices. She’s the one who keeps her parent’s wartime service medals mounted in frames, and whenever they move bases, those frames are the first to come out of the boxes. She’s the only one who still calls him _Takashi_, no matter what everyone else calls him, no matter how many times he tells her not to. 

Shiro’s mother doesn’t take his diagnosis well.

Distantly, he supposes none of them do—how could anyone ever take something like that _well_—but of the three of them, she’s the one who just shuts down, in a way he never, ever thought she could.

In the roiling mess of things he feels about what’s happening to him, he can’t stop himself from feeling betrayed. After that day in the doctor’s office, she can barely look at him, and he hates—_hates_—how it makes him feel like he’s dead to her already. 

The next time his mother has to ship out for another tour of command, it’s both too soon and not soon enough.

His father tries to be there for him, tries to ease him through it, but his father is a gentle person and he won’t tell his wife to grieve the life she thought her son would have in some other way, a way that doesn’t make Shiro want to scream. His steady, silent support isn’t enough, not for what Shiro needs, not for the desperate urgency thrumming through him like a hurricane.

*

Keith doesn’t want to leave, but they tell him he can’t stay here alone, not now. He argues with them, tells them it’s his dad’s house, it’s _his_ house, they can’t take it away from him. He hates how patiently they explain to him that it’s just not possible, and eventually he’s too tired to keep fighting them.

A nice lady with a data pad comes and helps him pack the most important things, like his books about space and aeronautics, his clothes, his school stuff. He has to wait until she’s called into the other room by the nice man who came with her, and only then can he get the knife out from under his bed and into his bag. He grabs his second pair of sneakers, the ancient little handheld game console his dad got him from a garage sale, his personal notebook, and—

The box of notes.

He almost opens it, wants to see his dad’s handwriting, but then he realizes his eyes are already wet and he _can’t_. He closes the box and puts it into his bag with the rest. 

After that, he just… doesn’t know what to bring. They told him he can’t come back, not until he’s older. They say things like ‘your father’s will’ and ‘the estate’ and ‘held in trust’. 

Keith already misses this place—the marks on the doorframe that show how much he’s grown, the simple wooden walls and the faint smell of pine from them, the way the sunrises always come right through the front windows—and he hasn’t even left it yet.

* 

Neither of his parents say anything when Shiro looks up from a science textbook one day while his mother is home on leave and declares that he wants to be an astropilot, that he wants to be on the next mission to the moons of Jupiter. Two weeks later, neither of his parents protest when he applies to the Galaxy Garrison’s accelerated admissions program and starts preparing seriously for years of intense flight and then officer training just three months shy of his seventeenth birthday. He expects his mother to argue—she’d always talked about him joining the Officer Academy back in Etajima like it was a foregone conclusion—but she doesn’t. 

The Garrison doesn’t even usually accept applications for accelerated training at his age, but his extraordinary sim scores make him an exception right from the beginning. The way they stare down at the numbers and then at his young face and then back down at the numbers with barely contained shock makes him grind his teeth, but they always stamp whatever needs to be stamped and then tell him to wait for the next round of paperwork.

He can’t wait, though, can never wait. He can only stand being idle for a few days, and then he’s going out on his hover bike, flying toward the horizon at full throttle.

He’s not even out of high school yet, but he feels time closing in on him like a vice, choking him unless he’s in motion. He needs to go faster, _farther_.

Somewhere in the back of Shiro’s mind, he understands that his father is seriously alarmed by this, by the way he starts to hate his medical appointments, by the way he starts to ignore his friends, but something tight and turbulent inside him won’t let him stop long enough to feel guilty about any of it.

Shiro’s resolve hardens, and he rushes out of his parents’ house and into the world without looking back. It doesn’t matter how numb his hands will go eventually, how weak his arms will get someday.

He’s going to find a way to fly.

*

The other kids who lost their parents – the other kids who are grieving and angry and alone – they always have some kind of picture of their family, a memento that lets them look over those smiling faces and remember better times. Sometimes they’ll show him this precious record, shy and protective of it, and other times they won’t, keeping it close and hidden. Keith can show his own precious handful of pictures, all of himself tucked small against his dad’s big form, but he’s started to hate doing it because another question always follows, and he never knows how to answer it.

_What about your mom?_

Keith doesn’t have any pictures of his mother.

He’s never even seen one, doesn’t think they exist. He realizes that he has to stop voicing this because saying _there aren’t any pictures of my mom_ makes people… look at him oddly. It’s just one more nail into the coffin of any bond he could have had with any of his foster mates. Most of them talk about mothers as if they’re a miracle, the sweetest and most caring being imaginable, an angel of love, but Keith has no idea what that’s like.

He knows very little about his mother, except that she was strong and loyal and loved her family fiercely. His father revered her and missed her equally, pained by her absence in a way that never healed and which Keith only now understands his father didn’t want to be healed of. Keith only now understands that maybe all that time his father was _waiting_, and that his mother maybe didn’t actually _die_, but that thought fills him with a riot of confusion and anger and hurt, so he turns away from it as hard as he can.

He holds tight to the fact that his father wouldn’t have always spoken of her so admiringly, so tenderly, if she had really wronged them, left them for any reason except one that was noble and right and enough. Keith can’t fucking imagine what reason would be good enough for her not to have come back to them – to _him_, _especially_ now – but Keith has always trusted in his father’s judgement more than he’s trusted pretty much anything else in the world, so he can let it lie, mostly.

He can’t help but dredge it up sometimes, though, when he can’t stop himself from wondering where in the whole goddamned world she could possibly be, if she’s not in the ground somewhere, level with his father. Keith knows they loved each other, and he reasons that they must have had a deep, powerful bond for his father to remain so loyal and bound to her, but he has nothing to help him understand this.

No pictures, no letters, no videos, no record of her at all.

He only has a knife. 

*

Life is one day at a time, one foster home at a time.

By the time he’s thirteen, Keith supposes that he shouldn’t feel like he knows who he is, but he does. He knows exactly who he is, exactly what they all say about him, and he’ll fight it until his dying breath.

He’s the fuck up, the charity case, the weirdo, the drifter, the loner.

He’s forgotten, unanchored, unhinged, at odds with everyone around him. But there’s a knot of certainty in him somewhere deep, the only calm thing he can find inside the wildfire of himself. He carries it with him everywhere and it’s the only thing, sometimes, that can keep him sane.

This place, these people, this whole shit situation—it doesn’t _matter_. 

He’s going to find a way to get out of here.

*

When he’d turned thirteen, Shiro’s father had bought a broken down old model hoverbike that was about as far from the cutting edge as you could get and still not have wheels. Then he’d told Shiro he could ride it when he fixed it.

Shiro had thrown himself into it like he never had with anything else. He’d learned every nut and bolt, worked odd jobs on and off base to buy each part one at a time, and then installed everything himself. The day he got it running was the most exciting of his life, and it had hooked him on flight so deeply that he’d felt like maybe he’d been born for it. 

Six years on from that day, Honours Graduate Cadet Takashi Shirogane _knows_ he’s born for this.

Shiro loves—_loves_—being in high atmo, loves breaking out of the blue into the black beyond. He’s always loved flight—velocity and angles, thrust and drag—but finally getting to be above the earth?

It’s almost spiritual. The wonder of it is staggering.

For the first time in his life, he feels small and mortal and insignificant and impermanent… and that’s okay. He’s travelling at five miles per second and he finally feels like he can slow down. Up in orbit, between the interplanetary dark and the bright blue light of the planet, dwarfed by the scale of the universe around him – it’s the only time that he isn’t scared of dying. What’s coming for him is something right, up here, something natural. He gets to see a new sunrise every ninety minutes and each one makes him feel like a new man.

He’ll do anything to get on the next off-planet mission.

He’ll do anything to stay up there, where his death sentence makes sense. 

*

When Keith sees the red leather jacket at the thrift store, he knows it’s _his_.

It’s _him_.

He has it in his hands, feeling the weight of it – it’s a well-made thing, a very lucky find in this hole-in-the-wall shop – when he spots a group of kids from his school coming up the mall. He hears them talking too loudly about how bored they are, hears one of them suggest the thrift store. He buys the jacket in a rush with the last of his cash, doesn’t even try it on before he’s out the door, racing back to the home. 

It isn’t until he’s in his room with a chair wedged under the door handle that he finds out it’s too big for him.

He doesn’t care, though. Every second that he can, he wears it anyways.

*

Of all the responsibilities that come with his fresh promotion to Second Lieutenant, Shiro actually _likes_ this part. He doesn’t mind at all when he has to leave off his regular duties and go into all the local communities around the Garrison, hauling the flight sim game and hunting for hopefuls. He likes meeting new people and talking to kids, even if it can be a little nerve-wracking to give speeches in front of roomfuls of people who are all staring at him. It can feel a little weird, too, when everyone already knows him from photos in the news, especially when people use words like ‘impressive_’_, or ‘handsome_’_, or on one memorable occasion, ‘hero_’_.

_Hiro is my uncle_, he’d joked, a little desperately.

Anything would be less awkward than being called a ‘hero’. He would much rather be winked at by crinkly-faced older women who tell him he’s ‘dashing_’._ He doesn’t even mind when they pat his shoulder and tell him their wartime stories while they run a sharp, nostalgic gaze up and down his uniform.

And it is usually the Garrison greys that catch the eye, fills them with stars, gets everyone riled up. After more than a dozen schools, Shiro has developed the vague understanding that a man as tall and broad as him in a uniform like this can expect some kind of reaction. He would feel a bit like a performing monkey except that he genuinely enjoys trying to get people excited about spaceflight.

Today is yet another middle school, two dozen fourteen-year-olds who look like they’d be delighted to watch paint dry if it got them out of class. It’s his usual speech, and it goes off without a hitch, gets the usual reaction, except… he’s caught short by the one kid in the class who won’t even look.

He’s never seen such a young face filled with such adult disinterest. 

Most kids, when they say they don’t care, do so defiantly because they secretly do. But this kid? Shiro thinks he really, actually doesn’t. The way this kid ignores him isn’t posturing or pretention at all; Shiro in his shiny insignias and welcoming smile just isn’t on his radar. Shiro, and by extension the Garrison and all it stands for – scientific and human advancement, the grand endeavour of the space exploration program, even respectable career advancement—just doesn’t impress him.

And that? That’s something. 

His attention snags on the kid’s profound lack of interest like a thorn catching his sleeve. He looks closer, keeps an eye on him while the whole class files out to the parking lot and gathers excitedly around the sim, notices the dark looks the others throw at him and the wide berth they leave around him. Shiro feels for someone who’s so clearly alone.

While he’s here, he thinks, he’ll see what he can do to encourage the kid.

*

The sim levels clock up, and up, and the babble of noise from the other kids goes from snide jeering to raucous excitement. And then the sim levels keep going up, and _up_, and the tone shifts from cheers to disbelief to sullenness.

But Shiro couldn’t care less about how this kid obviously trips something in his agemates, makes them hostile without even really doing anything. He’s watching the way the kid flies—and he does _fly_, flies it like a real ship, doesn’t treat it like a video game at all, not like the others—and he thinks _maybe this is the real deal_. 

Shiro feels a thrill go through him, something palpable and electric.

When he asks, the teacher makes the kid—his name is Keith—sound like a Troubled Case, clearly thinks that Shiro’s nuts for considering him for the cadet program. Shiro only has a moment to process her unsympathetic reaction before there’s the noise of someone failing the sim, and then the sound of his car getting stolen.

*

On some level Shiro wonders if he was crazy for bailing the kid out of juvie, for giving him his card and a second chance, but he would eat the cost of a whole new car if it meant he was right about what he saw in that sim.

For the first time, Shiro realizes what it must have been like for those dumfounded recruiters who hadn’t been able to take their eyes off his scores even as they’d reached blindly for their PDs. At the time, he’d been annoyed by their hushed and urgent phone conversations, the way they’d only barely bothered to go half out of earshot before they’d said things like _but ma’am, you won’t believe this guy’s reaction times_ and _I don’t care about the academic forms, you have to process this immediately_.

Now he gets it.

*

Shiro feels vindicated and relieved in equal measure when Keith actually shows up at the garrison the next day.

Standing next to him on the tarmac, Keith side-eyes him skeptically. His body language is a knot of doubt and reluctance, but he can’t hide the hungry way he looks up at the Calypso shuttlecraft, and he can’t keep the fervour out of his voice when he starts spouting trivia about space missions. Shiro knows that he’s found someone with the same madness as him, the same drive to get up higher into the sky, faster up through the atmosphere, out into the solar system and then farther even than that, and it lights an eager spark in him.

Shiro realizes he already has a soft spot for the kid, tells him he wants to help him.

“I think you’ve got a lot of potential, Keith,” he says, and he means it. “What you do with it is up to you.”

The kid’s face twists into a clear _yeah right_, but then he looks down at his dusty shoes, thinking intently. Then he looks up at the shuttle for a long, silent moment. Finally, he shrugs slowly, cautiously. Without looking at Shiro, he says, “Okay. Whatever. I’ll give it a shot.”

There’s a flicker of hope in what Shiro can see of Keith’s eye – the first time he’s seen anything like it in the kid’s face – and Shiro feels the mission click into place in his being. He has a responsibility, now, to help this kid get into the cockpit and then into the sky.

He’ll make sure Keith flies.

Someone has to go up after him. Someone has to go farther than he ever will.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms and Saints by Florence and the Machine.
> 
> In canon, Shiro and Keith are seven years apart in age. For various reasons, I aged Keith up by one year and closed the gap to six years.
> 
> Shiro’s illness in this story doesn’t correspond to any real life degenerative neuromuscular disorder. It’s essentially Plot Disease and I’ve taken Serious Liberties. I can’t do any kind of justice to any particular condition that really exists and the real shit that people go through dealing with any of them. That’s just so beyond my realm of knowledge and the scope of what I can do here for this story. I tried to do right by anyone who is facing a chronic, degenerative, or terminal illness, though, at least in terms of how it affects one’s priorities and sense of future. I hope I’ve been respectful and that any of it rings true.
> 
> JMSDF is the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, aka the Japanese Navy. Shiro’s mom is a Squad Commander Second Class, which is my own translation of 2等海佐 ‘ni-toukaisa’ using my meager undergrad Japanese skills. This is a real rank in the current Japanese Navy and I’m possibly/definitely skewing it for my own purposes. I also decided to use ‘squad commander’ to distinguish it from ‘commander’, since the latter is a Garrison rank used for folks engaged in space stuff. Shiro’s mom isn’t into space stuff, and wishes her son wasn’t either.
> 
> UC is the United Council, my own version of what the UN became after the Third World War.


	2. Curve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! I'm aiming to post biweekly sometime on the weekends, so look for updates every second Saturday or Sunday. And? I'm very excited for this section. It's one of my favourites and I had a blast writing it. Hope you enjoy! Thanks for coming along with me on this ride. 
> 
> Special thanks as always to my beta Sarah, who I know is really excited for this section too. HUGS <3 
> 
> More about my barely curated brain-dump spotify playlists for this thing:
> 
> Mood - All the songs that I found inspiring or useful for writing this, but which didn't fit into the other playlists and aren't necessarily what I would listen to while reading it. All the songs with lyrics go here; the other lists are entirely instrumentals meant to accompany reading. 
> 
> Garrison Days - 'Teenagers training for space' vibes. School, friendship, awkwardness, growing up. And science.
> 
> Save Each Other - The Feels. All of them. Moments with meaning. 
> 
> Defend the Universe - Space adventure music. Weird, wonderful, and big. With a dash of 80's.

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**2: Curve**

_And people just untie themselves_   
_Uncurling lifelines_

*

Keith doesn’t need anyone to tell him that he only narrowly got admitted to the Garrison.

He’s well aware.

He knows that his marks in school were adequate at best, respectable only in the subjects that had actually interested him. He knows that his list of extracurriculars had been basically non-existent, other than those times when he’d volunteered at the local dog shelter, and that the number of positive character references he could put on his application had been a grand total of one. He knows all this, but his entrance sim scores had been high enough to guarantee him a spot all on their own, and he’s heard of some cadets who got in on less.

So what the fuck is this place’s problem?

It doesn’t seem to matter that he’s acing every physical test they can throw at him, that he’s actually been getting decent marks in all his classroom training, or that he can fly circles around cadets three years his senior in the sims, and even some of the officers. It doesn’t matter that Keith is putting great numbers up on the leaderboard and already getting through intermediate aviation topics with ease.

What matters, apparently, is that his fellow cadets lag so far behind him that he looks like he’s flaunting their mediocrity in their faces on purpose. What matters is that he refuses to play nice with people who look down on him. What matters is that Keith is the _only_ person in four years to even come close to the Garrison’s Golden Child, one Second Lieutenant Shirogane, and nobody thinks he’s earned it.

That boy from his old school – James Griffin, as pompous as his name – he’s the worst of many. He was a sore loser that day when they both got a crack at a Garrison sim, and he’s a sore loser now, scowling and muttering whenever Keith does anything. Good or bad, rewarded or punished, Griffin has a problem with him.

Keith can deal with it, though.

As long as Griffin doesn’t push it, Keith can deal with it. 

*

When Keith came to the garrison, Shiro had expected some roughness, some friction, but he’d assumed that the kid could be softened with time and a new focus. He would make a few friends and settle in. Other than the wariness that he wore like a shroud, Keith would be, more or less, just another cadet. 

Shiro feels naïve, because Keith is not just another cadet. He could never be just another cadet. Keith is a hell of a pilot, burning with raw talent in a way that’s as rare as it is difficult to guide, but he’s also a spitting caged tiger of a young man, bristling and biting anything that comes near him.

Untrusting, recalcitrant, and as reactive as gunpowder.

Keith is so clearly uncomfortable with almost everything that Garrison life entails that Shiro almost feels bad for dragging the kid into this, but he won’t let him sabotage himself. Not even when Shiro gets called in to account for Keith’s antagonistic behaviour because there’s no one else to call. Someone has to be in Keith’s corner. He belongs in the cockpit as much as Shiro ever has, and Shiro won’t give up on him, won’t let that go.

Maybe he should have known that the animosity he’d seen between Keith and Cadet Griffin would come to a head like this—with Cadet Griffin saying something clearly insulting and Keith lunging at him with his fists—but he’d hoped that it wouldn’t.

Shiro feels really damn naïve.

*

It’s not the bruises on Keith’s jaw or knuckles that get to him, not even the blank and resigned way the kid avoids his eye and lists off the reasons that Shiro was wrong and should wash his hands of him, just like the whole Garrison is ready to do. It’s the hesitation in Keith’s expression when Shiro tells him he shouldn’t ever give up on himself.

_That’s_ what gets to him. 

Maybe this is a kind of charity, and Shiro should be ashamed of himself for condescending to another person this way—_pity_, his father always warned, _isn’t the same thing as true compassion_, and Shiro knows this better than most—but he really, genuinely wants to help this kid. He wants to change the way Keith looks at himself, because Shiro sees so much in him. 

“You don’t even know me,” Keith says, suspicious as always, but Shiro is ready for that.

“No, I don’t,” he says, letting bare honesty colour his tone, “but everyone needs a hand sometimes.”

He holds out his own in offering. To his surprise, a change comes over Keith’s face, and it’s like a sunrise. God, the _look_ the kid gives him. Like Shiro hung the moon after Keith tore it down. Like he never knew that you could get more than one second chance.

Bruised knuckles and all, Keith takes his hand, and Shiro knows that he made the right choice. When something deep in him eases, just a little bit, he knows he will never regret this.

*

Keith doesn’t need anyone to tell him he’s on thin ice, but he does appreciate the way Shiro makes it clear that washing out isn’t a foregone conclusion either. He can’t even imagine what strings were pulled to keep him here, but he’s not going to let Shiro down again.

So Keith applies himself, like he never has before. He smartens up, studies harder, tamps down on his temper as best he can. He manages to keep his cool and stay out of trouble, for the most part. He avoids any more fights with the other cadets, at least, though they hardly thaw towards him and things are still tense. It’s hard, and it’s lonely, but Shiro keeps checking in on him and this, more than anything, keeps him above water.

The guy must be incredibly busy, must have a list of duties as long as his arm, but Shiro always takes a moment to speak with him when they cross paths, always makes time for him when Keith comes to him with a question. Shiro actually listens to Keith, takes him seriously, cares about what he has to say even though he has no earthly reason to. Clearly, he stands up for Keith behind the closed doors of staff meetings and personnel reviews, because the instructors get off his back a little, don’t single him out as much. Keith likes to think that maybe his more deferent attitude is helping, but he suspects it’s mostly because of Shiro.

The guy’s so damn sincere that sometimes it makes Keith _mad_.

_No one_ is this nice. No one _ever_ pays any attention to Keith unless it’s to give him shit.

Except for Shiro.

Keith appreciates all of it, everything that Shiro does for him—he would be an asshole if he didn’t—but these little acts of kindness can twist him up inside, make him twitchy and nervous, even angry. He feels bad that Shiro is putting so much effort into him, but… he also really likes it when Shiro spends time with him.

Shiro, to Keith’s mild frustration but complete lack of surprise, is good company.

Over time, slowly, Keith feels himself unknotting until he can be grateful for Shiro’s attention and encouragement without feeling guilty about it. It helps that Shiro always smiles wide and bright when they meet, like he’s actually happy to see him.

*

And then there’s the flying, the aircraft, the stars.

Keith hardly failed to notice the way Shiro looks up at the sky, and when he does the same beside him he feels something stirring in him that he’s never felt before.

A purpose, or something very like it.

He wants to be up there, and for the first time in his life, Keith can actually see a path to something he wants. Flying is something really _real_ to Keith, and very little has been real since his dad went into a burning building and didn’t come out. It’s real, and by the grace of something in Shiro’s eyes that Keith can’t even name, it’s actually attainable.

He doesn’t have a candle or matches or anything, but when his bunkmates are out, Keith sticks a toothpick in a muffin from the mess hall and, before he can feel foolish, makes a wish over it for his fifteenth birthday.

He just wants to be an astropilot. He doesn’t ask for anything else.

*

The pre-exam season rolls over the Garrison like a thunderstorm, drenching everyone in quiet, slightly desperate intensity, cadet and instructor alike.

Keith refuses to let any of the stress he’s feeling show, but of course Shiro can see right through him. He keeps reminding Keith, gently, that if he needs help, he can ask for it, but Keith doesn’t really believe him until Shiro just starts showing up everywhere.

Suddenly, Shiro is sliding in next to him on the mess hall bench, casually bringing up a trick he remembered recently about instrument navigation, giving no sign that he’s seen Keith’s textbook, open to exactly that chapter. Shiro is leaning against the wall in the hallway that goes to the sim labs, scrolling through something on his PD, but actually, he’s not busy, and would Keith mind if he came with him to watch? Shiro is telling stories about his own Fundamentals of Aeronautics exam back in the day, and that Sergeant Chadha is a big stickler for the details. Shiro is stepping onto the mat in Keith’s favourite training room, already wrapping his hands and asking if Keith wants to go a few rounds. Shiro is dropping a pack of supplemental calculus problems on Keith’s desk, just in case Keith wants to try his mathematical mettle against something that’s not in the standard practice exams.

It’s exasperating and helpful in equal measure.

Shiro never gives him the answers, never coddles him or talks to him like he’s simple, never offers twice if Keith tells him _no, I’ve got this, I’ll do it on my own_. But he also never turns Keith away when he has a question, never rushes an explanation just to get it over with, never gives any sign of irritation when Keith says _wait, I still don’t understand this part_. It takes some time, but Keith eventually realizes that Shiro is actually, seriously committed to being available to help him train and study. Keith burns with discomfort and something like humiliation at the idea, but his pride isn’t so great that he won’t take the help when its given. And it is given, freely and frequently and with the kind of patience that Keith didn’t think anyone really possessed.

Shiro’s presence nearby while he pours over his texts or flings himself through sim levels keeps him grounded, becomes a soothing constant. Keith doesn’t have a lot of experience with being soothed by another person, least of all an authority figure. Shiro is unequivocally his mentor, technically one of his commanding officers – Keith’s superior, by every metric, in rank and age and skill – and yet Shiro has never, ever felt like Keith’s keeper.

Compared to everything Keith has come to expect, this doesn’t make any _sense_. From what he’s been overhearing more and more often, it doesn’t make sense to a lot of the other officers either, but— Keith realizes he’s starting to worry about that less and less.

Maybe it’s selfish, but Keith resolves that if Shiro wants to give him his time and his help leading up to the exams that will decide his entire future, he’s not going to say no. Even if the rest of the Garrison wants him to. 

*

Shiro can handle flack.

Being an astropilot comes with a certain amount of pressure, for starters. And being the son of a highly ranked officer has always come with a certain amount of extra crap to put up with, at least in Navy circles. He’s certainly not immune to being on the receiving end of significant looks, pointed comments, blunt questions, even bare insults and frank challenges. Some of it is vindictive and some of it is justified, but Shiro’s used to all of that. 

Layering on more because he’s taken a wayward cadet under his wing hasn’t phased him, and won’t. Like anyone who flies jet planes and space shuttles for a living, Shiro knows that he is at least as even-keeled and rational as he is driven. He can keep a level head in free-fall. He can handle pulling a few Gs on the curves. And besides all that, he’s always got a master tactic in his back pocket, something that has always come easily to him. 

Shiro is, naturally, _personable_.

He knows how to get along with people, and it’s a weapon he’ll wield on Keith’s behalf any time he needs to.

There are people here – and not just stuffy superior officers, but some of Shiro’s own colleagues, the other members of the team he led into orbit—who have become concerned enough about the situation, about the potential consequences of what they sometimes unkindly call Shiro’s ‘pet project’, that they’ve questioned the wisdom or the expedience or the necessity of it. As if Shiro helping out a ‘misfit’ will somehow cost him something.

These people Shiro simply disarms, makes a point to remind them of what’s decent. Keith doesn’t need charity – that’s not what’s going on, here – he just needs a fair chance, and Shiro is going to keep giving it to him, no matter what anyone at the Garrison thinks of it. He isn’t known for being particularly stubborn, but Shiro _will_ dig in, against all comers, when it matters, and he’ll do it with a smile. 

So far, all of them have given up on trying to convince him to give up on Keith, though some of them have backed off with real bafflement in their eyes. They simply can’t understand why Shiro would _do_ this, what he’s getting out of it, what he thinks the _outcome _of all of this will be. But these are the same people who don’t understand why Shiro keeps applying for spaceflight mission after spaceflight mission, why he speaks about himself as a pilot rather than as an officer, why he keeps pushing for farther and faster _up there_ when he could be gunning for the next promotion _down here_, where the pay and the prestige are both better, where he could easily cash in on his own reputation for a very comfortable dirtside career.

Shiro knows they don’t understand, and he’s not ever going to explain.

There’s that knot inside him, something coiled so dark and tight that he has to let the torsion out in fractured bursts. One mission at a time, one launch at a time, one moment above the Earth at a time. The farther the pins and needles creep up his arms, the darker and tighter it gets. The numb tingling is up to his right elbow now, and the fingers and palm of his left hand have begun to prickle, and—

No, he’s not thinking about that right now.

He’s thinking about what Keith deserves, because thinking about that helps the twisting thing inside him unwind, just a little bit, in a way that so few things can, and Shiro is more grateful for that than words can express. Any objections to the how or why or what next of it simply don’t matter. Shiro doesn’t need anyone to tell him how they think all of this will turn out. 

Shiro’s well aware of what the outcome will be, ultimately, at least for himself.

*

In a blistering streak of mad studying, Keith gets through his exams. They take him off disciplinary probation, and, miraculously, let him advance to his second year.

Hugely relieved and feeling more than ever that he might actually have a place at the Garrison, Keith finds himself suddenly with a lot more free time and leeway than he’s used to and no desire to run away or avoid his situation.

He feels buoyant these days, hopeful. It’s novel. A good thing, a new sensation, but Keith doesn’t know what to do with it, or himself, for a whole summer.

There’s a little money that his dad set aside for him, but he lucked into a bursary too and Keith knows he doesn’t need to worry about supplementing himself with a summer job or anything. He’ll keep training, of course, under much less pressure and with a lot fewer prying eyes now that two thirds of his fellow cadets are back home with their families. He wants to review his upcoming course work, clock up more sim hours, keep in shape. And he wants to keep spending time with Shiro. He wants to figure out some way to do something nice for Shiro, some way to pay him back, even just a little, for all he’s done for him.

What do you give someone who opened all the doors in your life that you thought were shut? What can you give back, when you don’t have much of anything?

Keith vows to find out.

*

It’s not a problem that Shiro heads out for three weeks of special training, and that Keith won’t see him for a while. Keith can keep himself entertained—has, in fact, never done anything but—and there’s certainly enough to get done, even during the hot, empty months of the summer break.

No, the problem is that being out of the man’s presence means being surrounded suddenly by the man’s legend, and that turns out to be really disorienting. Shiro seems like the realest thing in the room while he’s right next to you, but if he’s not, he’s suddenly… unreal. 

Every corner of the Garrison is stamped with the unparalleled achievements of Second Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane, and Keith feels a bit foolish for not having noticed it. He’d kept his head so far down just surviving his first year that he’d only peripherally taken note of Shiro’s eye-wateringly high sim scores, his prodigious log of flight hours on a whole slew of different aircraft, his armful of broken records, his lengthy list of completed missions. It’s all merely impressive until Keith overhears some senior officers talking about Shiro like he’s still green, still a young upstart, and then it sinks in that Shiro is _twenty-one years old_, and that Shiro was only a cadet for a year because he went directly into his commission at the age of eighteen.

Shiro never, ever talks about himself like this, but he is actually, genuinely, a certified fucking prodigy. It finally sinks in that Shiro isn’t just the best pilot in the Garrison. Shiro’s the _best pilot the Garrison has ever seen_, and Keith suddenly understands the depth of the shadow he’s been standing in.

It staggers him for a moment, actually makes him stop dead in the middle of the hallway.

His eye catches on a framed news article on the wall featuring a large picture of Shiro and two other people, all three in flight suits. The first crew led into space by the youngest ever team leader to do so, it says. It’s next to another framed article, this one of the first supersonic flight in over a hundred years to stay under the totality of an eclipse for more than an hour. Half technological stunt, half scientific experiment, it had been a race to keep the jet in the shadow of the moon as it crossed the planet. The young pilot, 2nd Lt. Shirogane, had been flying at something like Mach 2 the entire time.

Keith would feel overwhelmed trying to catch up to him, living in his wake, but Shiro has always been so damn eager to help Keith keep up. He would fall into the trap of thinking of Shiro as a come-to-life hero, someone superhuman, but he realizes that he knows Shiro better than that.

Shiro showed him more of himself than that. 

*

Shiro’s arms ache, all the way up to the shoulder, and he feels spun, his head still reeling a little from the hours of maneuvers and then the flight all the way back to the Garrison. He’s sore and tired and his brain feels a little burnt, but he still doesn’t want to get out of the cockpit.

He always wishes he could stay, just a little longer.

It’s late, though, and the ground crew clearly wants to go home, so Shiro hauls himself out with numb hands and lets them get to it.

He crosses the tarmac to the barracks on a kind of autopilot, his thoughts still up in the sky, full of trajectories and calculations. Absently, he realizes that he missed his window to get something hot from the mess; they closed up hours ago. He yawns, rubs at his eyes, realizes he’s still got all his flight gear on when his glove scratches his eyelid.

Where is he even going? 

He finally takes a proper look around him, notes tiredly that he went towards the mess hall anyways. Then something taps him on the elbow and he jumps and turns—

“Hey,” Keith says, sounding amused. “You look lost.”

Shiro half laughs, half sighs, says, “Yeah, got turned around.”

“How was the training?”

“Fine. It went fine.”

There’s a silence, then, and Shiro realizes that Keith is watching him. He can’t place the expression on Keith’s face, maybe expectant? He’s so tired. If he can’t get any food at this hour, at least he can go to sleep.

“I guess I should—” 

“Here,” Keith says, and presses something into Shiro’s hands. It takes his synapses a moment to realize that it’s _warm_, wrapped in foil with a paper napkin tucked around it. Then the smell hits his nose and his mouth actually waters.

“Is this—did you bring me a _burrito?_” Shiro says, disbelieving.

“Come on,” Keith says, and starts pulling him by the sleeve.

Keith drags him, unresisting, to the darkened and empty mess hall, does something to the door to make it open that the officer part of Shiro’s brain is going to ignore, and then drops him onto one of the benches. He produces a bottle of orange juice out of nowhere and puts it in front of him too, and Shiro can only stare.

“Don’t you have something?” Shiro asks, dazedly, but Keith only rolls his eyes and reaches out to pull off Shiro’s gloves for him.

“Eat,” he insists, so Shiro does.

And god, it’s spiced steak and dark beans and guac with green salsa and sweet corn and it’s _so good_ that Shiro loses himself in it for a while. He knows his mouth is full and he must look ridiculous, blissed out by a hot burrito, but he doesn’t care. He was so hungry, and—this is his favourite, he realizes. This is exactly what he likes best from a place that’s not even on Garrison grounds, and how the hell did Keith know that? How the hell did he get out there past lights out? 

“Good?” Keith asks, his chin propped on his hand and a look of deep satisfaction on his face.

“How—” Shiro starts, and then stops. Keith looks really pleased. Really happy. Shiro decides it doesn’t matter how. His head had been so full of flight data, stuck up in the atmosphere, and now it’s just… not. There’s just his full stomach bringing him back to earth, and a sense of ease.

“Okay,” he says instead, “So what did you do while I was gone?”

Keith hesitates. “You’ve got stuff in the morning, right? I can tell you later.”

Shiro just waves this off with one of his empty gloves and cracks open the orange juice. “Now is fine,” he says. “Come on, I want to catch up.”

They talk for a while, Keith volunteering a smattering of details about his last few weeks, and though he’s still exhausted, for once Shiro feels content to be out of a jet and on the ground.

*

Keith’s learned to keep his head down and just focus on the studying and the training. Most days he can just shut up and stay on task, but it’s still hard.

He got a reputation in his first year that seems to cling even now into his second, and without the gentler people skills he never had a chance to finish learning from his dad, he can’t seem to change anyone’s mind. These days, the other cadets mostly just stay clear of him if he can’t avoid them, thankfully, and he doesn't fight. He hasn’t, since Shiro held out his hand and he took it.

That handshake was a promise, and Keith won’t break it.

It doesn’t stop the other cadets from talking shit, though, and it doesn’t stop his temper from getting the better of him sometimes. Keith can restrain himself from throwing his fists around, but he can’t always keep from arguing and talking back, the way his dad never, ever did. Shiro doesn’t have his dad’s quiet southern manners, but Shiro tells him about how his own father is a sort-of Buddhist_,_ and that he’s learned a thing or two from him about staying calm.

Shiro keeps telling him _patience yields focus_, and Keith always feels a hot stab of annoyance at that, because clearly you need some patience in the first place, or patience doesn’t yield shit.

Still, Keith tries to remember what his dad used to say about being _hospitable, even in your own head_, and he tries to apply what Shiro’s been teaching him about mindfulness.

It… helps, more or less.

Until it’s suddenly late fall, Shiro suddenly gets promoted to full Lieutenant, and then it suddenly doesn’t. 

Keith hadn’t imagined that the fawning adulation could get any more intense, but with that extra stripe on Shiro’s shoulder, somehow it does. Before Keith really knew Shiro, it wouldn’t have mattered to him much, but now that he _does_—now that he meets up with Shiro at least five out of every seven days, now that he knows both Shiro’s schedule and his moods pretty much by heart—it starts to bother him. 

It bothers him that Shiro is seen as so godlike. It bothers him that people do this thing where they don't really…_talk_ to Shiro, not like a normal person. They just talk _at_ him. They keep putting words in his mouth, assuming things, asking questions and then speaking over him with their own answers. Shiro is so damn polite about it, too.

It starts to drive Keith crazy, and no amount of _observing his breath in the moment_ can put a lid on his temper. When he hears his fellow cadets saying ridiculous things about what Shiro must be like, he can’t stop himself from bursting out, “He’s just a guy! Like a normal guy!”

They think he’s bragging about his connection to Shirogane, trying to say he’s on the same level as their hero, but what he’s trying to say is, _Stop treating him like he’s not a person!_ They take it as arrogance, but Keith just wants people to see Shiro for who he really is. 

No, Shiro isn’t ‘just a guy’, despite his choice of words. He’s _fucking exceptional_, and Keith knows this better than any of them.

But Shiro is also a big fat dork who likes bad puns and plastic airplane models and old-ass cheesy martial arts movies from, like, a hundred years ago. He likes people, but he stays away from the mess hall at lunchtime because he feels weird about getting stared at. He often falls asleep after big meals, can in fact nap absolutely anywhere, his fringe in his eyes and his mouth open. He enjoys trying to eat with his chopsticks in his left hand, declaring that one of these days he’ll finally be fully ambidextrous.

He’ll dote on any dog, but gets a wistful smile on his face when he does, and he gets so worried he’ll forget people’s names that he’ll practice them under his breath before important meetings. Keith has heard him mumbling to himself before he strides into whatever classroom, rehearsing whatever speech he has to give, and pacing nervously.

He over-analyzes and over-prepares. He frets, though he does it quietly, privately. He can even get low, sometimes, worn down by something that he won’t talk about. He sometimes loses his thread halfway through a sentence, and then honest to god apologizes for it, like he’s done something rude.

He forgets that he can’t handle his alcohol and comes back to the barracks after a beer and a half, flushed all the way down his neck, embarrassed and a bit unsteady. He will even admit, when pressed, that he stuck his tongue to a frozen metal fence post as a kid, even though he’d known it was a bad idea. 

Shiro is a good man and he’s a great pilot, the best of both that Keith has ever known. Maybe less imperfect than most, but he’s still a _human being_.

Sometimes, Keith catches himself wishing that his fellow cadets knew Shiro better, knew the legendary Takashi Shirogane like he does. He sometimes wishes that at least one other person knew that, if you time it just right, and you say something sufficiently outrageous, Shiro, the Garrison’s beloved Golden Child, will spit coffee out of his nose.

He only wishes this sometimes, though. Paradoxically, Keith usually wants to keep Shiro to himself, even as he’s annoyed that other people don’t know him better. He’s acutely aware that he has special access to the man’s attention and time, and he can feel jealous of this privilege and unworthy of it in turns, tying himself up in knots over it for the first time in almost a year.

Is he trying to be Shiro’s guard dog? Or his greatest proponent? Is any of that even his place? Who does he think he is in all this? 

Keith can’t tell anymore.

*

Shiro had hoped as much, but it’s still a pleasant surprise when his abrupt promotion to Lieutenant gets him fast-tracked into the pilot’s position on the next Saturn fly-by.

He wonders about the circumstances until Commander Holt pulls him into his office and explains that the previous candidate had been injured during training—a ruptured ear drum during underwater EVA prep—and wouldn’t be healed in time to make the launch window. It’s a raw deal, and Shiro feels an empathetic pang for the other pilot, he does. But hungry anticipation rises up in him, fierce and quick. He’s helpless to stop it, and maybe he’s not as willing as he should be to try to keep it leashed.

Maybe it’s selfish, but he could see the moons of Saturn _with his own eyes_. He could skim under the planet’s glittering rings, witness the roiling winds of its fathomless atmosphere, bend his own path around Titan, Rhea, Enceladus. The dark knot in his gut slackens at the thought, ever so slightly. He feels like he can breathe a little deeper…

The mission isn’t actually his yet, though. His acceptance is still conditional.

Shiro has always liked Commander Holt, admires his intelligence and good judgement. The man is renowned because he’s as reasoned as he is adaptable, and Shiro knows that you don’t get as much spaceflight experience as Sam Holt has had over the years by being reckless or foolhardy. So he’s not surprised when the Commander gives him the pilot’s position, but also gives him a hardcopy order to report to medical. Shiro takes it without hesitating, his hand brushing his new Lieutenant’s insignia as he tucks it carefully into his uniform pocket.

Maybe this is a little rushed, a little undeserved. He knows that not all the senior officers approve of his promotion, feel that he should prove his mettle on a few more inner system runs before they let him in on a months-long mission to any of the outer planets. But if someone like Commander Holt is going to offer him a way to go _up there_ again, farther than ever, then Shiro is going to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

Even if it means capitalizing on another pilot’s misfortune. Even if it means getting examined and scrutinized by more doctors. Even if it means intense training on a left-handed control configuration, just in case.

He doesn’t know what kind of officer—what kind of person—that makes him. 

*

The launch window isn’t that far away, and Shiro has to pull away from the routine he’s settled into since September in order to get ready for it in time. He feels a sense of urgency carrying him towards that day, feels himself lock into focus on that one goal. He passes as many of his duties as he can onto other willing officers, quietly lets his social life close down, fold into nothing.

He’s done it before, and he knows he’ll have to do it again. It doesn’t bother him, much, except that it means the most frequent exchanges he has now that aren’t mission related are run ins with whatever cadet or junior officer wants to ask him ‘What’s it like to prep for such a long mission so quickly?’, or even ‘How do you keep it so together under all that pressure?’. Some days, he doesn’t know, but he does his best to find an answer and a smile for them anyway. 

It would become seriously distracting, even draining, except that Keith has started to appear on the edges of these conversations like he’s psychic, like he can actually feel when Shiro needs a quick out. He’s a little ashamed to use Keith as an escape route—'Please excuse me, I have an appointment with another student’—but the extraction is too welcome for Shiro to give the feeling much room.

Shiro starts to feel a little guilty, too, that getting bailed out of these conversations is about as much time as he can spare to spend alone with Keith in between all of his extra training. The rest of the time, he has to ask Keith to tag along while he plunges doggedly through his sim requirements, through his inches-thick procedure manuals, through his relentless fitness regimen.

He’s just lucky that Keith is the kind of person who is fine with long silences, who prefers to learn by observation, who considers wordlessly being in the same room to be ‘quality time’. And Keith’s excited for him, pays careful, almost rapt attention whenever Shiro talks about the mission details. Even when Shiro devolves from normal human sentences into a mess of technical jargon. Even when he starts drawing rings and orbits in his dinner. He’s just quietly, constantly…there.

Keith never asks how he’s handling it all, why he’s even doing all this.

It feels really good to not have to explain or qualify anything. It feels good to just be understood. He’s so grateful for that, for the way Keith keeps him sane. 

*

The day before launch day is scheduled to the brim, but Shiro won’t leave the planet without carving out just a little bit of time for himself. He’d had to stare down Iverson to get it, which was a feat in itself, but in the end he’d grudgingly been given leave to take two hours before final checks and quarantine.

Some part of him is deeply tempted to spend it reviewing mission specs one last time, but Shiro heroically resists. Instead, he tracks down Keith in his dorm room—second year cadets are finally eligible for their own—and tells him to leave the awful looking sci-fi paperback he’d been reading and come with him to grab a bite to eat. Keith only blinks at Shiro for a second before he tosses the book into his closet—unerringly aimed, it arcs neatly into his laundry hamper with only a slight flutter—kicks himself off his bed, and digs his feet into his sneakers while he pulls on his red leather jacket.

“Lead the way,” is all he says.

It’s occurred to Shiro that maybe there’s some irony in having Keith as a passenger in the car that he’d once stolen, but Keith has always seemed really embarrassed about that, and Shiro won’t bring it up just to rub it in.

When Keith realizes where they’re going, he barks out a laugh and then sits back with his arms crossed, smiling just a little smugly.

Lucia’s Cantina really is Shiro’s favourite burrito joint, and they’re lucky that it’s open at this ungodly early hour. Maybe it’s not a great idea to eat something like this so close to when he’s going to have several Gs crushing down on him as he leaves the atmosphere, but Shiro decides he doesn’t really care, and orders his usual. Keith grins and orders the same. They settle into one of the booths and stuff themselves in contented silence for a while, until Keith starts to chew more and more slowly. Eventually, he puts the last of his burrito down and just stares at the tabletop.

“Hey,” Shiro says, when he notices how unhappy Keith’s expression has become.

“It’s just,” Keith starts, twisting a napkin in his hands. “Five months is a long time.”

_Ah_. 

“Well,” Shiro says, “we’re already working on faster propulsion systems, so soon we’ll be able to get all the way out to—”

“Don’t give me that. I’m not a raw recruit, you don’t need to sell it to me.”

“Fair enough.”

“…Sorry,” Keith says. “This is nice. Thanks for the burrito.”

Shiro can tell there’s more, so he lets Keith chew on his words while he finishes his own meal.

“You don’t need to worry about me, or anything,” Keith says finally, his tone a rough mix of sharp and soft, like he’s trying to sound reassuring but can’t help the prickliness. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know that,” Shiro says, smiling despite himself. “I’m not worried about you.”

Something in his tone must be off, because Keith’s eyes snap up and he searches his face intently. Shiro resists the urge to wipe at himself with another napkin, like he missed a spot, like somehow a smear of sauce is what’s giving him away.

“What is it?” Keith demands. “Shiro, the mission is going to be fine. You work harder than anybody I know. Commander Holt knows you’re ready for—”

“It’s not that,” Shiro says, “I’m not worried, I feel prepared. It’s just…”

He feels himself reaching for his right hand, but he stops before he can give in to the urge to rub at his tingling palm. He stares instead out the window at the greying sky, the clouds as close to snow-heavy as this part of the country gets, even at this time of year. He can feel Keith staring at his profile, his attention burning into him, searching, and Shiro almost wishes that Keith weren’t so damn perceptive.

Shiro’s barely admitted this to himself, had felt grasping and self-centred as soon as the thought formed enough for him to recognize it. This mission landed in his lap on a golden platter with fewer questions asked than he could have hoped for. This mission is a pure stroke of good luck. He shouldn’t feel this way, he shouldn’t let his ambitions bring him to this, he shouldn’t— 

But Keith will understand him. Right?

When Shiro finally gives voice to the tiny, needling, _stinging_ disappointment that he won’t get to set foot on any of the moons, that he wishes, selfishly, that this mission were more than just a fly-by, Keith instantly _gets it_. He just nods, his expression so damn sympathetic—and Shiro honest to god needs to get a handle on himself, because it moves him.

This kid.

Shiro would wonder _where’d they find this guy_, but he _knows_. He was there, he was the one who found him. Shiro would feel proud of that, except he can’t reasonably take credit for what Keith is, how he sees things—sees _through_ things—how he took to flying like a star to burning, how he took to reading Shiro like just another solvable equation—

It’s like getting re-oriented in micro-gravity. A new frame of reference suddenly snaps into place around a new _up_, all his churning senses suddenly righting themselves around something steady. With a jolt to his understanding, Shiro realizes, all at once, that Keith was the one who found _him_. Maybe Shiro had done all the talking, but it was Keith who brought himself into the Garrison, who’s been doing all the hard work to hone his own talents.

It was Keith who chose to take a chance on Shiro, as much as it was ever the other way around.

When they get back onto Garrison grounds, it’s Keith who shyly ventures a loose hug to say goodbye, and Shiro’s as delighted as he is honoured.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms and Saints by Florence and the Machine.
> 
> Burrito bonding is the best bonding :)
> 
> In my mind, the Galaxy Garrison is what would happen if you took NASA, re-purposed it abruptly for war, and then in peacetime let it get back to the space science stuff. I imagine it being more accountable to an international body like the UC than to any of the governments of individual countries. It borrows military structures and maintains an intimate connection with the military (personnel and aesthetics, tech and research, equipment and engineering, training methods, etc), but isn’t actually a branch of any military and doesn’t engage in any kind of combat or have any offensive capabilities (…yet. But we’ll get to that). At this point in canon, they’re sending what amounts to high school graduates to other planets for samples, for cripes sake. At this point in my own interpretation of the show’s post-world-war era, the Garrison’s mission is to seriously explore the solar system, and they’re basically using a really extreme kind of internship program to do it.
> 
> Also, travel times in the solar system? What? I can’t hear you, physics, you'll have to speak up. I was as accurate as I could be in terms of the geography of the solar system and things like how fast you go when you’re in Earth orbit, but there’s a lot that’s completely hand waved in the show in terms of technological capabilities and I’m gonna do the same. 
> 
> EVA = 'extravehicular activity'
> 
> There really was an astronaut who couldn’t go on a mission because he lost his hearing during EVA training underwater. Go search up Leland Melvin--he's a cool dude--and go watch One Strange Rock.


	3. Entanglement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. Here's where things get Complicated for poor Keith and Shiro. 
> 
> I was originally going to artfully chicken out and gloss over the Complications, but then my beta called me out. So thanks to the lovely and uncompromising Sarah (<3), here are the Complications in full glorious detail! 
> 
> I hope you all enjoy.

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**3: Entanglement**

_But you took your toll on me  
So I gave myself over willingly  
  
_

*

Five months isn’t that long, Keith reasons. A hundred and fifty days, plus change. He’s been through that many days alone before, and he knows he’ll have to do it again. It doesn’t bother him, much. It’s just three thousand six hundred hours, a third of them spent asleep. The other two thirds are going to be a little less pleasant, but it’s not like there won’t be anything to do.

Between taking his meals in his room, checking updates about the Saturn mission, and spending hours abusing the combat dummies in the gym, he throws himself into his training and tries not to feel completely invisible.

The days start to blur.

His course work, his instructors’ voices, the hours in the sim lab, the other cadets’ faces and remarks—they all start to blur. Keith feels like _he’s_ starting to blur, and maybe he should be alarmed about this, but… he just isn’t. He can’t tell if he’s finally learned how to be patient or if the most vital parts of him have just folded up, folded down deep inside him, dormant and silent.

*

When Shiro has been almost four months in space—one hundred and sixteen days, Keith knows, today’s date in particular burning bright in his awareness—Keith hears the news that the Saturn crew successfully completed the gravity sling maneuver that will send them back home. He also gets a notification that he’s received a personal message. With special permission from Flight Command.

Keith feels his heart rate accelerate, because he _knows_ who its from and why. He runs, _runs_ back to his dorm room to open it, and—

God.

Even flying orbits around alien moons one point three billion klicks from Earth, Shiro still managed, somehow, to send Keith a vid call message wishing him a happy sixteenth birthday.

For the first time in the fog of weeks passing, Keith feels like he’s been _seen_, and the simple care of the act fucks him up. Everything folded up at the bottom of him opens, all at once, and it’s just too much. Keith hasn’t cried like that since his first night in the first foster home when he was ten and his dad had just died.

He watches the video eight, ten, a dozen more times, until he starts to feel ashamed of himself and stops. He’s so grateful and it’s so precious, but… he shouldn’t _need_ this. He shouldn’t rely on it.

Keith _knows_ better, he does, but he also knows he’s going to count down the last thirty seven days anyways. 

*

Keith’s hand slaps into the doorframe as he skids into it, and he knows he’s out of breath and sweaty, but he doesn’t care. He frantically scans the room for—

“Shiro!”

The man is halfway through shrugging on his uniform jacket, a small pile of personal effects gathered in the middle of the infirmary cot. He looks up when he hears his own name, and his face breaks out in a grin.

“Hey,” he laughs, “long time no see.”

Keith can feel himself smiling too, but he’s also got a nasty stitch in his side from sprinting all the way over here, and he has to drop his head down to breathe for a second, his hands on his knees, before he can do anything else. He feels a warm hand on his shoulder.

“You alright?” Shiro asks. He sounds like he can’t decide if he should be amused or concerned, and Keith _missed_ him, so much.

“…‘m fine,” he manages, “came from the sim lab. Heard you were out.”

Shiro whistles lightly. “So you’re a marathon runner now.”

Keith straightens as much as he can, quirks one eyebrow.

“Clearly,” he tries not to gasp.

Shiro laughs again, and his hand gives a short squeeze, guiding him to the cot so he can sit down. Keith does so gladly, gets his breath back while Shiro packs up the rest of his things into a shoulder bag. Keith also tries to subtly look him over to make sure that _mild symptoms associated with extended micro-gravity_ really are the only reason he’s here. Shiro looks worn out, like he could really use some sleep, and a bit rumpled, like he’s been in a flight suit for too long and he can’t get regular clothes to sit on himself the right way again yet. But other than that, he seems fine.

“Heard things got a bit hairy going through the Jupiter Trojans,” Keith says, sweat still sliding down under his collar but his voice finally more or less back to normal. “Heard that there was some pretty inspired flying to get the crew out of it.”

Shiro smiles a bit crookedly, and starts to do up his uniform.

“Well. Automated sentry-scout systems can’t track every asteroid in the solar system perfectly. We really shouldn’t be relying on them as much as we do.”

“Heard you’re going to get a commendation,” Keith adds, and can’t stop himself from sounding really damn pleased about it. “Commander Holt was really impressed, apparently.”

“Was he?”

Shiro is staring down at himself distractedly, scowling at the way the front of his uniform is buckled and uneven. He pulls at it ineffectually for a few seconds, then puffs out a sigh and gives up.

“I can’t even do this up,” Shiro says, “and they want to give me a commendation.”

Keith can feel himself grinning so wide his face hurts.

This _dork_. He really, really missed him.

“It’s good to have you back,” Keith says, before he even knows he’s said it.

Shiro glances up at him, and the frustration melts from his expression.

“It’s good to be back,” he says, and something about the way he does makes Keith think that he really means it.

*

They’re going to have more free time together over the summer, once he gets through his exams, and Keith’s happier than he’s been in a long time. Keith feels like he’s finally in a steady orbit around something, can think about the future for once.

Shiro gave him this.

Shiro is his goddamned sun, and maybe he should be alarmed about this—he _is_ alarmed about this, he’s low key freaking out about it—but Shiro is also good for him, teaching him a lot about how to be a better man and a better pilot. Keith likes to think that his dad would get along with Shiro, and that his dad would be proud of him right now. The thought is a soothing ache, a kind of growing pain. 

Maybe, Keith thinks, he can be connected to other people and have it be a good thing for once, something that doesn't just end up dragging him through the mud.

*

The first time, Shiro tells himself that this is an appropriate reward for Keith having done so well on his second year exams, for proving that he’s a good student and a responsible young man. If he’s honest with himself, though, he just really wants to see Keith’s face the moment he realizes why they’re out at one of the auxiliary hangers on a Saturday.

Pulling the covers off both hoverbikes at the same time like some kind of magician is just self-indulgence, really, but Shiro beams at the stunned, _you gotta be joking please don’t be joking_ look on Keith’s face and tells himself he’s doing this for purely altruistic reasons.

He _altruistically_ beats Keith in a race to the western edge of the canyon, and is _not at all_ excited about the spark of competitive ire that bursts into flame behind Keith’s eyes. That would be immature.

Shiro is trying to be a good example, he really is, but Keith can actually keep up with him in a way that no one else ever has and that’s such a thrill that it makes him less circumspect, maybe, than he should be. It’s just—

He’d wanted to see how close he is to being overtaken.

Keith had been right behind him the whole time, and Shiro can’t decide if it’s selfish to feel comforted—anchored—by that. 

*

The second, third and fourth time—the fifth, and counting—Shiro can’t pretend even to himself that this is only for Keith’s sake, not when he starts to teach him the kind of stunts that whole sections of the health and safety regulations were created specifically to discourage.

It’s _so much fun_. When was the last time Shiro let himself just have _fun_?

Being up in space is a wonder, but this? This is quickly becoming a close second, Shiro realizes.

Keith is as much good company as he is good competition, and Shiro can tell this is something good for himself, maybe good for both of them. It’s been a long time since getting to the horizon just didn’t matter.

It doesn’t even phase Shiro much that his right hand has started to seize, the nerve signals jamming up until everything curls into a fist so tight that it won’t unclench for minutes at a time. The muscles can ache for days after, the pins and needles coming in waves, but Shiro feels himself take it in stride in a way he never thought he would.

*

Medical fits him with an experimental electro-stimulator cuff, tech that Shiro knows is so cutting edge that he only has access to it because of the Garrison. They tell him its sensors will measure and anticipate, as much as possible, the peculiar cascade of nerve misfires that come before the worst muscle spasms, and then it will deliver a calibrated shock that, hopefully, will keep the pain down and his hand functional. 

Shiro knows that normally he would chafe at it—would hate the significance of it, would resent his need for it—but these days? He only feels the briefest spike of anger when the neurologist says _this is just an emergency kill switch_, like his ‘parts’ have been inconveniently malfunctioning. Like his growing disability is worth mitigating only so much as the Garrison can be sure it won’t be a liability. Shiro lets the comment pass, lets the Garrison foot the bill, lets the indignity wash over him.

Shiro would rather deal with the heavy cuff, and everything it means, than not be able to take his hoverbike out to race in the desert, or get into the cockpit of a jet, or go up into space where he belongs.

He still hides the thing, carefully, under the sleeves of his jackets, but less because of any shame and more because the thought of having to actually explain it makes him tired all the way down into his soul. The other option is to just lie about it, but the thought of that it is almost as bad.

Of all people, he doesn’t want to have to lie to Keith, but he can’t tell him what’s really going on either, because… Well. That's the rule. Shiro doesn't tell anyone about his illness, not unless he absolutely has to. That’s been the rule for a long time, ever since—

_No_, he’s not thinking about that. He doesn’t need to revisit all that. That decision has been made, and made for very good reasons.

The way Keith races him—unreservedly, unhesitatingly, with fierce glee and single-minded intensity, his face unclouded and shining with adrenalin and joy—that’s just one more good reason to add to the list.

Keith doesn’t need anything else on his mind. He’s got so many other things he should be concentrating on. Shiro won’t stain him with that blunt, black knowledge, won’t risk distracting him from his training.

Shiro’s got the cuff, now, and no one else needs to know. He’s got his own hand back, more or less, and that’s what matters.

*

Keith sometimes forgets how close they are to his old house out here. With all the hours that he spends inside the different training facilities of the Garrison, it’s easy to go days at a time without catching a real look at the landscape. It’s easy to take the familiar smells of the desert for granted and not take full notice of where he is.

It weighs on him, sometimes, that the childhood home he’d missed so terribly at first is only a sharp turn south and a hard ride away. It weighs on him too that it will sit empty and unminded until his twenty-first birthday. He worries about its condition sometimes, wonders if his dad would be upset.

It’s hard to dwell on it, though, when the hoverbike races with Shiro on the weekends are just so much icing on the cake of a good summer, something that Keith allows himself to get seriously excited about.

Keith gets to see Shiro the Fly-Boy, out here in the desert, the man who keeps trying to throw himself off the planet at increasingly inhuman velocities. In an earlier century Shiro would have been a hell of a barnstormer, and it makes it easy to forget about any other meaning this wilderness has to him.

Keith had only ever seen that side of Shiro reflected in the way journalists wrote about him, in the sheer number of the records he’d broken and how much he’d beaten them by. While on base and on duty, Shiro had always been so measured, so unruffled, so _patient_. Even when they spar, even when the point of the activity is to _attack_ each other, Shiro is always the very model of calm self-control. But then to Keith’s secret delight, Shiro loosens up when they’re off base and out of uniform, becomes just a bit competitive, just a bit brazen. His humour gets a bit sharper, his usually gentle ribbing gets a bit more pointed, and his laugh gets a lot louder.

And that’s nothing compared to how he _flies_.

Shiro isn’t actually reckless, not for a pilot of his calibre, but out here he gets just a little wild, pulling maneuvers that lurch Keith’s stomach just watching. 

The speed—the daring—is infectious, and out here with Shiro, Keith feels like he’s learning how to handle a vehicle in flight for real, more than in all two years as a Garrison cadet. But that doesn’t mean that when Shiro plunges his hoverbike _right off a goddamned cliff_, Keith is ready to follow after him.

Holy _shit_.

Keith skids his own hoverbike to a halt, only just in time. He watches the dust trail of Shiro’s bike carving a path across the canyon bed into the distance far below him, and knows that he still has a long way to go. 

*

They’re leaning against their cooling hoverbikes, watching the sun go down in a blaze of colour, and Shiro feels a swell of contentment. And he feels a swell of pride when Keith spouts his own words about patience back at him, like he’s actually taken it to heart. 

Here, in this private, quiet moment, Shiro finally asks about Keith’s father—the firefighter—and feels a swell of sympathy when the kid’s voice shakes.

“Everyone told him not to run back into that building, but… you couldn’t tell _him_ anything,” Keith says, something quietly torn open about his tone, and Shiro thinks, _He’s too young to have such an old wound_.

Shiro’s life has its own laceration through the heart of it, seeping and deepening, but he knows he doesn’t really understand the kind of loss that Keith’s been living with. He doesn’t think he can even properly imagine it, but he knows this person, and maybe that will be enough, here.

“Sounds like someone I know,” he offers, as warmly as he knows how, and he makes sure Keith can hear the admiration in his voice. Keith returns his smile like an echo, fainter but still there. 

Then Shiro feels a twinge of pain up his right arm—a tiny acid lightning bolt from his fingers to his elbow—and his wrist cuff goes off, too loud, breaking the calm in an instant. Shiro turns away quickly to hide it from view, gives himself a quick dose of stimulation before it gets any worse. But of course, Keith sees the cuff—sees him _flinch_—and asks about it. Shiro feels some instinct take hold of his mouth, something as honed and polished as it is completely beyond his control. 

“These are just some electro stimulators to keep my muscles loose,” he feels himself saying. The words are flung, ballistic, salvos that he can only hope hit a safer topic.

“What’s wrong with your muscles?” Keith asks, and Shiro could _kick_ himself at the dawning concern in his tone.

“Ah, nothing,” he says, and the thing in control of his tongue deflects, deflects, deflects. “It’s just what happens when you get to be an old timer. C’mon, we should get back to the base.”

Keith doesn’t ask again, his silent acceptance hitting Shiro like a punch that never lands. Keith lets him have the deflection, but it gives him a rising swell of unease, and Shiro’s left feeling—

Caught.

*

Damn it. _Damn it_.

Shiro knows that Keith isn’t going to let him get away with anything like that ever again.

What was he thinking?

He should have looked at his levels before he left the hanger, should have checked the cuff’s settings. He can’t afford to be so careless. And that callback joke about being an ‘old timer’? That was just _sloppy_. The chances of Keith—dogged, stubborn, relentless Keith—simply letting the topic drop if it ever comes up again is pretty much zero, and Shiro knows it.

Keith is sharp eyed and observant and uncannily intuitive, and Shiro knows that Keith will scent any other lies or avoidance from a mile away and then will give him shit for even trying. He knows that the one thing that gets Keith’s hackles up more than anything else is being condescended to, and he suffers kid gloves badly. Very badly.

The only thing that Keith has ever responded to is the truth, but Shiro can’t, he _won’t_ do that. The thought of having that conversation makes his jaw ache, makes him taste bile.

He won’t do that to a friend. That’s the _rule_.

But maybe… God, Shiro feels like an asshole for even thinking like this when it comes to Keith, but maybe he can… _distract_ him from the topic. He’s been doing it all this time with everyone else, and isn’t sure how ashamed he should be of the fact that he’s gotten really good at it, over the years. He does it to his own family on the rare occasions they actually speak—sometimes does it to himself, even, when he can’t stare certain truths in the face—so how would this be any different?

But Shiro realizes how. Because _Keith_ is different. Keith makes him hope in really dangerous ways. Keith is going to be everything that Shiro won’t ever have the time to achieve, and god, he _knows_ it, the certainty etched in his goddamned _bones_. 

Keith is going to be so much more than he ever could be.

_This kid_.

He makes Shiro burst with pride as much as he makes him burn with a deep, abiding protectiveness, and he wants to spare Keith everything just as much as he knows Keith could take on anything.

He owes Keith his honesty, his trust, but… not about this, Shiro decides. He’ll tell him _anything_ else. Keith can have any truth he wants, just…

Any truth but this.

It’s an ugly arithmetic, a deceitful compromise, a kind of verbal slight of hand that Shiro should be ashamed of, and _is_, with all his heart.

But Shiro also knows it’s the only way he’ll be able to feel his hand seizing up at his side and look Keith in the eye at the same time. 

*

Something about the end of the summer fills Keith with urgency.

He feels like he’s running out of time, feels impatient, feels agitated. Spending time with Shiro used to be the thing that soothed him, helped him feel comfortable in his own skin, but now? He could swear that Shiro’s letting him come closer than ever, and it’s _electric_. Not calming at all. He’s on fire with curiosity.

Maybe it’s because Shiro feels like he pried too much with that conversation about Keith’s dad and how he died, but he’s been letting Keith get really… personal. Keith can ask deeper questions about his life, can get Shiro to talk about all sorts of things, things that Keith realizes Shiro hasn’t ever shared before.

Like the fact that Shiro regrets that he doesn’t ever use his Japanese these days, that seeking opportunities to do so feels fraught because he isn’t sure if it’s his birthright anymore, that he’s a little scared that one day he’s going to wake up and the language is going to be just… _lost_ to him, faded from his mind.

Like the fact that it’s been months since he last sent a message to his parents, that he doesn’t know what part of the world his mother is doing her latest tour of command in, that he doesn’t even know if his father is doing okay with her away so often and almost doesn’t feel like its his place anymore to ask.

Like the fact that he doubts Flight Command and the senior officers will let his career keep going the way it is, that he’s worried he’s coming up against seniority politics and doesn’t know how well he’s navigating it, that he’s honestly not sure what to do next to make sure he’s going to be able to keep flying.

Keith can’t offer any real advice—he wouldn’t dare—but he’s desperate to just keep listening, if Shiro will let him.

Shiro’s been treating Keith more and more like a peer, like a _friend_, and it’s almost addictive to be privy to Shiro’s life in this way, to be on that level.

It makes Keith feel really adult.

Privileged. Proud.

*

Of all the new things about himself that Shiro has been carefully sharing—small and precious revelations that Keith can’t help but hoard—the one thing that Shiro mentions in passing, like it’s barely worth noting, like he assumed Keith already knew, is “Well, I’ve only ever been attracted to men, so—"

But Keith _hadn’t_ already known. 

How could he not know?

Somehow, Keith never, ever thought about it, and what had been offered innocuously opens a great yawning abyss of terrible possibility inside him. It forces him to answer questions about himself that he never bothered to ask, or which had always been blanks he didn’t know how to fill.

He doesn’t know if he’s attracted to women or men.

He… hasn’t ever really understood what people mean when they talk about that, about _wanting_ someone. He always thought he just didn’t give a shit about dating or relationships, that it just wasn’t a priority for him. Who had time and room for that? Who could afford that risk? Who would he ever want? How does someone want someone else?

The thing he wants most is just to stay near Shiro, the urge like a compass pull in his chest. That, at least he understands; it’s just a trajectory, a vector, a motion towards a steady point.

He thinks maybe he’s become too greedy with Shiro’s time, with his regard, but then wonders if he has a right. Of all people, hasn’t Shiro given him the right? He realizes, slowly, that he’s become greedy for the sight of him, too. For the way his smile cuts warm and sharp across his face, how his uniform sits just a little taught across his broad shoulders, how his hands settle steady and assured on whatever he touches, how his height curls over Keith’s own when he leans down to speak with him more eye to eye.

When Shiro smiles so brightly at him, nudges him, makes him laugh, gets in his space and holds his gaze, Keith feels like he’s unready for something and too late, hungry and overfull at the same time. Both welcomed and trespassing.

Is this what want feels like?

He just doesn’t _know_, and that stings. He feels like everyone else already knows, everyone else already gets it, so why doesn’t he? He feels like he _should_ know, but he just can’t get clear about it. Maybe he would want… someone like Shiro. Someday. If he were to ever want someone. If he could want someone. If that were ever possible.

He wishes, not for the first time, that he had gotten a chance to see his parents together, that he could have seen how they loved each other. 

Maybe then he wouldn’t feel like such a fucking _stranger_ to this.

*

There’s an appointment a week before regular classes start in the fall that all the cadets of his year have to go to, the first of several career consultation meetings.

This is supposed to help him select the exact training and courses that will steer his future, but Keith struggles to articulate himself to the counselling officer, gets snagged on so many options. To her credit, she tries to be patient with his snappish tone and his flat ‘I don’t know’s, but it isn’t long before she resorts to just ticking down a list of ‘would you rather’s to help him narrow it down.

And answer by answer, Keith starts to get a shape in his head of what could be. What he actually wants in his life. He already knows he wants spaceflight. He already knows that he wants his life to be a sequence of missions, flying farther and farther out from the earth. He’s going to be an astropilot—like Shiro—there’s no question of anything else, but… _how_, exactly? The way the counsellor lays it all out for him, there’s a few different paths to that, some of them Keith hadn’t even realized he qualified for, and some of them Keith hadn’t even been aware of.

Seeing his entire academic career so far laid out like this is a bit surreal. Can everything he’s worked for—worked through—for the last two years really be summed up so easily? His eye keeps catching on the all-caps text of his disciplinary probation, the words _conduct violation_ too neat and clinical compared to the memory of that raw anger boiling over and his fists finding bone. But there’s also the tidy list of his grades since then, and they actually look… respectable. A voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Shiro’s asks him why he’s so surprised.

By the end of the appointment, the counsellor has puzzle-pieced together a fall schedule on her data pad that will get him on his way to space, and Keith has built up an idea in his own mind of what he needs to do next to make it real.

He heads back to his dorm in a bit of a confused-pleased daze, wondering where all this sense of accomplishment came from, all this certainty. But of course, it makes sense, he realizes. Every choice he made in that office was because it’s what Shiro had done already, what would take him into space in Shiro’s wake. Keith’s got the footprints laid out in front of him, now. All he has to do is take each step.

He wants to be doing missions like Shiro.

God, he could be doing missions _with_ Shiro.

He wants to keep flying with Shiro, _so badly_, on more than just hoverbikes.

He doesn’t want to be left alone on the earth anymore, he wants to be out there with Shiro, sharing space and the stars with Shiro.

He wants to be with Shiro, more than anything, god he wants—

He _wants_—

The wave of it is so distressing, so whole-body _too much too much_, that he paces back and forth around his tiny room, his hands clutching his hair and his eyes on nothing.

Every choice, every turn, is _Shiro_. He can’t even properly remember the last time it wasn’t, and it strikes Keith suddenly how _insane_ that is. Hanging his hopes on one thing like this is so, so dangerous. He _knows_ this, but he can’t help himself—can’t help the hook already caught in his ribs, can’t help the gravity pulling him down onto the sharp point of it.

_Fuck_, he can’t stop thinking, _this wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t_—

Shiro wasn’t supposed to happen to him, not like this.

But Keith is already strung up by his feelings, pierced by them and hanging. It’s fucking _unbearable_—_why do people want this?_—but the thought of cutting himself loose from this is _so much worse_. Shiro has been the best thing in his life for a long time now, and losing that would be the worst kind of amputation.

He’d rather hang, he realizes. He’d rather hang and be whole. 

Once his heart has slowed its panicked thumping, Keith curls up on his bed, sleepless, until dawn.

*

Fall classes start in four days, and there’s no more _time_.

All the extra hours that Keith has gotten Shiro to himself over the summer, that's going to just… end. Keith is going to have to share Shiro with the rest of the Garrison again, and that aching place in his ribs _can’t stand_ the idea. 

Keith has to do something about this feeling he didn’t know he had, because it’s burning a hole right through him, right through the last days of the summer, but he doesn’t know _what_.

*

Maybe Shiro should have known that this would happen.

There were signs, maybe, in the way Keith’s always been physically close to Shiro like he never has been with anyone else, in the way Keith had watched him more intently in the last few days than he ever had before.

But the fact is, Shiro isn’t prepared for when Keith darts into his space, under his guard, and there, in the dark of the empty sim lab, tilts his head up just enough to kiss him—

*

For a fraction of a second, there’s warmth and breath and softness—

Keith didn’t know this could be so _soft_—

Shiro goes _rigid_—

—and it’s like ice water being poured through Keith’s whole body. Shiro’s hands are already up against Keith’s shoulders, _pushing_, but Keith is already ripping himself away.

He skitters backwards, filling with horrified panic. His ankle almost turns under him, and he catches himself with a hand flung out to grip the side of the nearest sim module, eyes sightless and blood pounding in his ears.

“I—I’m sorry, _I’m sorry_,” he’s saying, the words tumbling uncontrollably out of his mouth, “I didn’t mean it, I wasn’t thinking, please just forget it, please don’t say anything, please don’t—” His hand covers his mouth. He feels _sick_.

_What did I just do?_

He’s shaking so badly that his teeth are chattering, he realizes, and he must be such a mess because Shiro doesn’t even look shocked anymore, just worried. Really worried.

He needs to get out of here, he needs to _go_—

*

There’s only a half second for Shiro to react before Keith is turning, fleeing, and it’s only his trained reflexes that let him reach out in time to catch Keith before he’s gone. The instant Shiro’s hand closes around his wrist, Keith just _sags_, strings cut, eyes closed and face burning.

Keith’s shaking, Shiro realizes—_seriously_ shaking—and Shiro doesn’t feel much steadier himself. Pure shock is still arcing through him, so strong that Shiro’s whole body has gone cold. 

And—this is really not okay, Shiro knows, the weight of it settling over him. This is _situation normal all fucked up_, this is something so delicate, so potentially disastrous, and he has to, he can’t—

This can’t happen.

This _really _can’t happen.

Shiro digs deep for his reason, for some composure, for the right things to say.

They _have_ to talk about this. They have to talk about this _now_.

*

Shiro won’t let him leave.

He coaxes Keith to sit down, to calm his breathing.

And then Shiro kindly, unbearably, explains why this was not okay, why it can never happen, why they can’t be like that. That Keith is only sixteen, and it doesn’t matter that he’s over the age of consent. That Shiro never consented to this, and won’t. That as long as Keith is still a cadet, Shiro holds a position of authority over him as his superior officer. That they could both be written up for misconduct just for crossing that line, no matter their ages. That if this were looked at in a certain light, Shiro could even be court martialed for disgraceful conduct with a junior who is also a minor. That quite aside from the career implications, there’s a snarl of ethical and personal complications that just… can’t happen.

That any kind of deeper relationship between them just isn’t possible.

And Keith shrinks inside, because that’s _not _what he wanted.

That’s not what he was trying to do. He wasn’t trying to… _come on_ to Shiro, wasn’t trying to ask for anything, wasn’t trying to get anything from him. He doesn’t even think he understands what being with someone even _is_.

He just wanted…

He can’t even explain to himself what he wanted. To be closer to Shiro? Kissing a superior officer was a _dumb fucking way_ to get closer. Shame wells up in him, and anger. He’s such a fucking _idiot_. This was such a mistake, but he doesn’t even understand why he did it. He trusts his gut, always has. He _lives_ by his instincts, has always felt his way forward through everything, and—

This hadn’t _felt_ wrong.

It hadn’t _felt_ like a mistake, it had felt… _right_, somehow, and he doesn’t know why, doesn’t know how he could have misjudged the situation—misjudged himself, or Shiro—so badly. His mind is going blank with a hot kind of static. He… can’t think straight, can’t process this. He feels betrayed by his senses, by the whole fucking universe.

_How the fuck did this happen?_

He needs out of here, out of this room, out from under Shiro’s concerned and shaken gaze.

“It’s just a crush,” Keith manages to say, hoping wildly that making the huge twist of feelings inside him sound small will get him out of this. “It was just a _stupid_ crush, okay?”

*

When he gets back to his room, Shiro doesn’t even turn on the light. He just puts his hands on his desk chair and leans, drops his head down between his shoulders and _breathes_.

He knows he did the right thing. In a wild kind of calm, he thinks he probably handled it well enough, considering—

Considering everything. Considering the potential consequences. 

As gently as he could, he’d reminded Keith of the immovable facts.

There had been no way to soften that blow, but Shiro had done everything he’d could to make sure Keith would understand and be okay about this. As okay as he could be, because Shiro had seen the way his words had _burnt_ something inside Keith, had wrenched something important about his world out of place.

Keith’s eyes had never lifted from the floor._ It was just a stupid crush,_ was all he’d said in the end, quiet and brittle. 

Seeing Keith _shrink_ like that—it had been a painful sight. Shiro knows it was the right thing to do, but he still feels so guilty, so torn up. How had he let this happen? This… shouldn’t have happened.

He hadn’t seen it coming, and he’d had to reprimand and reject his friend in the same breath, and that had _hurt_, more than he’d imagined it could. There’s something ringing hollow deep in him, something nameless and bitter and aching, and Shiro can feel how not okay he is, but he can’t understand it. He hadn’t known he could tangle himself up like this, that there could be enough room in him for another knot of grief.

How did he not know? 

Shiro stands there in the dark, his chest a too-full void, his mind twisting around the same thought, over and over again.

_This shouldn’t have happened, this shouldn’t have happened, this shouldn’t_—

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms and Saints by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> The Plot Disease thickens. Again, I'm quite literally making it up when it comes to Shiro's symptoms and treatments, but I wanted to incorporate his cuff and imagine how he'd handle his condition advancing. 
> 
> My personal headcanon is that Keith is demi-sexual/gray-ace, and his experiences here reflect my own flailings in that regard. Bad judgement is really easy when you’re so new to something like that and you have very limited context for what's going on with you. I had intense empathetic cringe while I was writing this. I... hope you did too?
> 
> Also. The Jupiter Trojans are a group of asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit but stay at its L5, which is pretty neat. If you're travelling in the plane of the ecliptic between planets, I figure sometimes you're going to run into traffic. Asteroid traffic. You should also look up how we track all the smaller bits floating around the solar system, because it's cool.


	4. Rescind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Complications continue! This is the part that earns the 'difficult conversations' tag. I hope y'all are ready for Shiro's need to talk things through. 
> 
> As always, extra super thanks to my beta Sarah, who always tells me when she likes one of my sentences <3

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**4: Rescind**

_But you had to have him, and so you did  
Some things you let go in order to live_

*

Twenty-two hours and no sleep later, Keith hears someone knocking at his door.

At first he doesn’t move from his spot on the bed, but the knocking comes again, more hesitant this time, and Keith is too tired to avoid this any more than he already has. He knows who it is. He gets up, fixing his gaze carefully onto the old carpet as he keys open the door, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Shiro step only a few inches into the room and then stop.

“Keith,” he says, like he’s relieved, like maybe he’d been worried, and Keith can’t look at him right now.

“What?” Keith says, hears the roughness of fatigue in his own voice. He sounds flat, worn thin, even to his own ears. He hasn’t left this room in an entire day, and suddenly it occurs to him to wonder how unkempt he is right now. He retreats to sit back down on the edge of his own bed, feels his shoulders ache as he hunches back into the position he’s occupied more or less since—well, since yesterday. 

“So. I um—” Shiro clears his throat. “I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

Keith feels a stab of feeble anger. 

“You’re not my babysitter.”

“Come on, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then why the hell are you here?” Keith snaps, and looks up, finally takes in the expression on Shiro’s face. Keith can read so much there—contrition, determination, uncertainty, the slightest shades of something wry—and there’s also something strained, something tired behind his eyes that makes Keith wonder, suddenly, what the last twenty-two hours have been like for Shiro. But there’s no pity, not even the merest hint of it, and that brings him up short.

Shiro’s eyes search his face in turn, and Keith doesn't even want to imagine what he can see there. Then Shiro gives a slow, crooked shrug of his shoulders, an awkward gesture for a man Keith knows is anything but, and it occurs to Keith that Shiro could have come here as his superior officer, as a representative of the Garrison—could have come into this room insignias first and back straight—but he hasn’t. Instead, Shiro has come here out of uniform. Shiro came as his friend. 

“You’re usually out at the hanger by now,” Shiro says, gently, “I just wondered if everything was okay.”

“The hanger,” Keith repeats, his thoughts completely derailed.

“Yeah. This is the last free weekend before the semester starts, so I thought…”

Keith can only stare at Shiro as he trails off, at the growing resignation coming over his face.

“Look,” Shiro starts again, like he’s squaring up to face something down. “Yesterday—”

“You thought what?” Keith cuts in, still confused. “I fucked this up. I… seriously crossed the line. Why are you—Why would I be out at the hanger? We’re not going out on the bikes anymore. We can’t… _do_ stuff like that anymore.”

“That’s not—Hold on. Let me explain,” Shiro says, and he rubs at his face. “I wasn’t able to be totally clear yesterday. That’s why I needed to talk to you. There’s a lot of things I should’ve done differently.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Keith, that’s just not true. A lot of my actions could be misconstrued as… leading you on,” he says, and then keeps going when he sees Keith open his mouth to protest. “I’m not talking about what it looked like from the outside. I’m talking about how _you_ could have perceived it.”

“But you didn’t do… that. You didn’t… _lead me on_, or whatever. Why would I ever think that?"

“For one,” Shiro says, “I took you off base, alone, for a meal together. That really could have looked like a date, to you or to anyone who knew about it, and I didn’t even consider that.”

Keith’s nose wrinkles.

“A date?” he says, baffled. “You bought me a burrito before you left for Saturn. It was funny. Why would that be a date?” 

Shiro blinks at him in surprise, and then he huffs out something like a laugh, like it’s been startled out of him. 

“_Don’t_,” Keith says, stung, face flushing. ‘_Date’, ‘crush’, ‘want’_—he really hates how he can never seem to use these words like other people do, and from Shiro? He’s too sore for that right now, the wound still tender. But Shiro looks genuinely sorry.

“I’m not laughing at you. I just… I was worried about what you might have assumed, I guess, and I’m a little… relieved that wasn’t what was going on. Either way, I needed to take some responsibility for my part in this situation—”

“But it was _my_ fault,” Keith insists.

“You’re not the only one involved,” Shiro counters, “and you’re not responsible for what I do. That’s on me. I’m the superior officer here. I should have defined the boundaries from the start.”

_From the start._

Keith’s stomach drops at the words.

“…I get it,” he says. “You shouldn’t have been doing any of that extra stuff for me. You shouldn’t have bothered. And now I messed up and it’s caused trouble for you.” 

There’s a long and quiet sigh.

Keith sees Shiro hesitate slightly, but then he comes and sits down on the bed with him. Not right next to him, he leaves a good amount of space, but not so far that it feels like he’s avoiding him.

“Keith,” he says, “being your superior officer has real implications, _legal_ implications, and I have serious responsibilities to you and all the other cadets under my command. I have a duty to help all of you with your training, and it’s my prerogative to offer whatever ‘extra stuff’ I want to whoever I think should get it. But I have to be really careful how I do that, maybe more careful than I have been. It’s… easy to forget my rank when it’s just us. And that’s really not okay. I talked with one of the deportment officers and—”

Keith’s head whips up, eyes wide. “You _reported_ it?”

Fuck. _Fuck_. He can only imagine that sitting on his academic record too, right next to his goddamned probation—

Wait.

“Shiro,” Keith says slowly, horror creeping over him, “you said you could be court martialed, you said—Why would you do that?”

“Because if I ever do anything that warrants being court martialed, then that’s _exactly_ what should happen,” Shiro says, and there’s a hardness to his tone, a vehemence, that Keith rarely hears. “Especially if it involves a cadet or one of my juniors. I went to consult a deportment officer because I needed to know if _I’d_ committed misconduct. I need to be held accountable.”

Shiro exhales, and the sharp-edged flintiness goes out of his expression as quickly as it came. He puts his hands up in reassurance. “And I didn’t report it. I didn’t have to, and the deportment office confirmed that. This situation wasn’t as serious as that. I wasn’t trying to… pursue you. And you didn’t assume that’s what was happening either. Your actions weren’t misconduct, Keith. From the way you reacted, it was just—”

“A mistake,” Keith says, miserably.

“Maybe, but the kind that anyone could make,” Shiro says firmly. “You don’t deserve a write up for what happened. I know you understand why it wasn’t appropriate.”

Keith winces. He’d spent a good part of the day reading and rereading everything in the code of conduct under headings like _harassment_ and _personal boundaries_ and _unwanted romantic and/or sexual advances_.

“It won’t happen again,” he says solemnly, and it’s another promise.

“I trust you,” Shiro says, and his expression is perfectly serious, perfectly sincere. Keith has to look down at his shoes, because _jesus_. He hears Shiro take another deep breath, says, “And… I want you to be able to trust me too.”

“…What does that mean?” Keith says. “Of course I trust you.”

“The deportment officer, she, um. She had to give me a verbal caution. You’re not the only one who’s made a mistake. I shouldn’t have brought you into any situation where my intentions could have been misinterpreted. I should have told you exactly what I meant by my actions.”

“So… you should have told me it wasn’t a burrito date?”

Shiro actually snorts a bit.

“Exactly,” he says. “Look, I’m still allowed to be your _friend_. There’s no regulation against spending time with whoever we want in an appropriate social context. There’s no regulations against staff and cadets just hanging out as mentor and mentee.” His earnest tone falters a bit as he adds, “If… that’s what you want, I mean. And I’d still like to help with your training, if you’re comfortable with that.”

There’s a long moment where Keith just can’t find the words, and eventually Shiro shifts a bit uncomfortably.

“You don’t need to decide now,” he says, maybe misunderstanding Keith’s silence. “I’ll… ask again later. And it’s up to you if you want to keep coming out with me on the bikes. I can give my authorization for you to take one out alone—”

“No!” Keith cuts in, the hook in him pulling painfully. “You don’t need to do that.” His heart had leapt into his throat at the idea of being able to fly the hoverbikes again after all—of having that _back_—and then plummeted at the idea of doing it without Shiro. “I don’t want to stop going with you,” he says. “Just not… today. Okay?” 

Shiro nods.

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s probably for the best. In the meantime…”

Shiro searches his pockets, pulls out a translucent plastic data card—the Garrison’s official shade of orange—and holds it out to Keith.

“Before we meet up again, report to Sergeant Estrella at the deportment office.”

“Why do I need to go?” Keith says, staring at the data card but not reaching for it. The idea of having to tell any of this to some officer—to some stranger—makes him feel instantly nauseous. “You already told them what happened.”

“It would be pretty messed up if they just took my word for it, Keith,” Shiro says, mouth twitching grimly. “She needs to talk to you.”

Keith nods, mutely takes the card, and Shiro seems satisfied with that. He expects Shiro to leave after that, but he doesn’t. He seems to be working himself up to saying something, keeps rubbing at his wrists and palms in a way that Keith has noticed him doing more and more. 

“I’m sorry I can’t be that person for you,” Shiro says eventually, and Keith could fucking _cry_. Shiro has been so fucking kind about this, and that makes it so much _worse_. Keith suddenly needs a minute to get a hold of himself, needs a moment to conquer the urge to press a hand to the ache in his chest and give himself away completely. Shiro is very carefully staring at his hands, giving him the time he needs to get his shit together, and Keith feels like such an asshole.

“I’m really sorry I caused you so much trouble,” Keith says, because it’s the least he can fucking do. And then, because he’s exhausted and the long drag of the hours has forced some things into perspective, he adds, “I’m just really glad I didn’t… ruin all this.”

“Me too,” Shiro says, quietly but with feeling. Then he finally stands to leave. “I’ll see you later. Right?”

“Right.”

The little warm edge to Shiro’s parting smile hits Keith hard, right in his bruised feelings.

_This is just a crush_, Keith thinks desperately, wills it to be true. _It’s just a stupid crush_.

*

Shiro leans against the wall outside Keith’s room, putting his head back against the concrete and his hands over his face. He breathes out between his palms, long and hard.

He won’t stay here long, he just… needs a minute.

There’s relief sweeping through him, the kind with an undertow. Shiro lets himself get pulled down by it, lets himself feel heavy with all the shock and stress and anxiety finally draining out of his body. This was the best-case scenario, in the end. Shiro doesn’t think that conversation could have gone any better, and—he even feels a tinge of pride. 

Not for himself, but for _Keith_. 

This kid—

…but Keith isn’t really a kid, not anymore.

Shiro doesn’t know if he’s ever seen someone take responsibility for a mistake as completely, as unequivocally, as Keith did for this. That, more than anything, is how Shiro knows that Keith is going to be okay, no matter what happens to Shiro, no matter how much _worse_—

No. Keith is always going to be okay. 

Beneath the cool wash of relief, beneath his exhausted calm, there’s still that ever-present knot, that tangle of something taught and urgent that’s only getting more clamorous, more imperative, and Shiro can’t hold it off any longer. For the last twenty-two hours—through the long uneasy night and the interminable time in the deportment office—he’s _tried_. But it’s undeniable now.

Shiro gives himself just one more minute of rest, the weight of his metal cuff pressing against his cheek. When he’s ready, he pushes himself away from the wall and heads towards the Mission Planning office.

*

The appointment with Sergeant Estrella isn’t quite as awful as Keith had feared, but only just. She’s actually a kind person, one of the few who’s ever made him feel like she’s actually listening, but his gratitude for that only goes so far when she starts to _very kindly _dissect everything he’s done with Shiro from every angle.

It’s mortifying to have to describe what he’d done in the sim lab, to have to put it into words, and she’s far more empathetic than he’d expected but also far more thorough than he’d hoped. The only mercy is that she doesn’t insist on eye contact while he does it and she doesn’t make any comment on the colour his face must be turning.

When she asks him questions like, _did Lieutenant Shirogane ever make any advances towards you or express any interest in a more than platonic relationship,_ Keith can’t possibly admit that he doesn’t really know what ‘advances’ are, or what ‘more than platonic’ would look like outside of what he’s seen in movies, but he knows what Shiro didn’t intend, so he just tells her _no, of course not_.

In the end, she determines that her original ruling can stand; Shiro’s punishment will remain a verbal caution for not being clear with cadet-officer boundaries, and Keith will be off the hook for using poor judgement and violating the personal space of his mentor as long as he never does anything like it again.

Keith is ready to crawl out of his skin, prickling and over-raw, wants nothing more than to get out of this office and to the gym so he can _hit something_, but Sergeant Estrella isn’t done just yet.

She assures him, almost more gently than he can stand, that all the details he’s given will be kept confidential, that only she will ever see the report. If he ever decides that Shiro really had _made advances_, that there really had been something off about what they’d been doing together, he can give permission for that file to be reopened. But in the future, as long as any improper cadet-officer fraternization isn’t suspected, the record of all this will just… stay locked away.

If that’s what Keith wants.

And where Keith’s belly had been a hot roiling cauldron of discomfort, it suddenly cools to a numb weight, like he’s suddenly in micro-gravity and drifting. He doesn’t know if what he’s feeling is profound relief or… something else. 

This can just… go away, never be spoken of again.

Keith nods his understanding, his acceptance.

He just wants this to go away.

*

Keith’s grateful that he doesn't have much time to dwell on it, because just a few days later he’s full tilt back into his next year, and he hadn’t known how much the instructors had been taking it easy on the cadets until now.

It’s like they’ve waited to hit the afterburn until the moment live-flight training starts for real, just to see who can handle the pressure, who might be future fighter pilot material and who definitely isn’t.

It’s amazing just to actually get to be inside a real aircraft—cadets in the cargo pilot class don’t get the privilege, not yet—but his days and weeks become so full of assignments and training drills and pre-flight tests that when he can surface from under all that and get a breather, weeks and weeks have already passed. For a while, he and Shiro don’t get to see each other that often outside their weekend hoverbike races or the occasional sparring session, and for once Keith can’t decide if that’s a mercy or not.

He still feels that pull in his chest towards Shiro, can’t seem to shut it down so he can move on from it. He feels stuck—grounded, literally, until he passes the rest of his live-flight training—inching forward only by the slow drag of days passing.

Things are still awkward between them for a long while, but the sharp edges of Keith’s humiliation grind against each other until it all gets duller, less agonizing. Eventually, the memory of it, that split-second taste of something he never should have let himself want, stops cutting him afresh every time he recalls it.

Instead, it just makes him ache, right under his ribs.

If it won’t go away, Keith hopes desperately that at least he’ll get used to it.  
  


*  
  


And then it’s the new year and there’s a new batch of officer transfers in from another base. Apparently, one of them knows exactly who Shiro is because he introduces himself at their first chance encounter like he’d planned it.

Keith isn’t surprised by this, not by the way the guy’s words feel slightly rehearsed and not by the way his face colours a bit when Shiro shakes his hand. People buzz around Shiro all the time, always have, and though Shiro is polite to all of them, few seem to get Shiro’s real interest in return. As friendly as he is, Shiro’s friendship is actually much more rare. Having it is something Keith tries not to take for granted.

The conversation with the guy—Adam, a new instructor—is brief and cheerful and then it’s over and Keith doesn’t think much of it. One more fan who got their trophy handshake with _the_ Shirogane, Galaxy Garrison Golden Child.

What else is new.

*

Keith doesn’t expect to see Shiro talking with Adam more and more often.

He certainly doesn’t expect Adam to start to join them at lunch tables and on the tarmac, joining in on a number of the same sim training exercises, helping Shiro with his maintenance duties when he’s not running his classes. Adam is a technically gifted man, a pilot with an engineer’s sharp mind and a teacher’s instinct for information, and Keith learns a lot just from listening to him. The guy is like a walking encyclopedia of all the major astronautical developments of the last six decades.

Keith can admit it’s impressive, and Shiro seems to agree. He seems more and more eager to pick Adam’s brain about the history of this vehicle’s development or the dynamics of that propulsion system, and Keith drops more and more out of the conversation, just not at that level of knowledge or experience yet. 

And that _is_ new.

*

It’s still brisk in the mornings these days, the dry air still chilled until the sun’s well up, but that hasn’t stopped most Saturdays from dawning with Keith making his way out across the tarmac of the airfield to meet up with Shiro for another hoverbike outing.

Shiro’s already in the hanger, he knows, and even from this distance Keith can see him underneath his hoverbike with his hands up in one of the open panels. It’s his own personal machine, a big red thing with a hell of a kick that’s hard to handle unless you know what you’re doing. It’s twice as powerful as any of the tame and tan Garrison fleet, but still nothing flashy, just a serious ride for a serious pilot. Keith wonders if Shiro will finally let him take it for more than just a lap around the tarmac today.

Adam is there too, he notices, in one of his usual places, leaning against the body and giving commentary. Keith is too far away to hear the words, but he knows the kind of conversations they have, expects Adam to point at some component and, a knowing look on his face, detail everything that Shiro could ever want to know about it.

But Adam isn’t looking knowing, today. He looks frankly nervous, twisting something in his hands, and after staring at his feet for a moment Keith sees him take a deep breath and say something to Shiro.

There’s a _clang_ that even Keith can hear and a wrench bounces away from Shiro across the asphalt. Shiro pulls himself out from under the bike slowly, staring at Adam, wide eyed and… blushing.

_Blushing_.

Keith stops in his tracks, feeling suddenly cold.

Adam is pink-faced too and Shiro staggers inelegantly up to his feet, completely fails to adjust his hiked-up jacket. His hand comes up absently to rub through his hair and then he nods, slowly, must say something affirmative because Adam’s face breaks out into a relieved smile so wide that even at this distance Keith couldn’t miss it. Shiro smiles shyly back at him and—

Keith can’t watch this.

He casts around for somewhere, frantic, ducks behind the nose of a nearby fuel truck, breathing hard, his mind racing. It takes him several minutes to calm himself, tamp down on the knot of nasty feelings that wants to burst out of his chest.

He should have known something like this would happen. He should have fucking _known_. People buzz around Shiro all the time. Of course one of them was going to catch his eye, eventually. _Of course_. 

Finally, Keith tells himself to stop being such a coward and throws himself out from his hiding place. Adam has already gone, he sees, and he lets out a long breath of relief. He numbly finishes his walk to the hanger, tries to be normal, keeps telling himself _it’s not your business, it’s not your business, this isn’t any of your damn business_.

His heart lurches uncomfortably when Shiro greets him warmly as always, only a little distracted. They get the bikes out into the wilderness, race like usual—Shiro’s on his own big bike, tells him _maybe next time_ like he always does—and Keith feels a mix of thrill and dread while they wind through the cliffs and channels. Shiro is cheerful like usual, laughs like usual as they finally slow down and pull up side by side. Shiro can’t hide his preoccupation, though, glancing often back to the base.

His stomach twisting around what feels like a ball of lead, Keith blurts out, “What’s up with you?”

Shiro guiltily brings his attention back to Keith. “Sorry, I. It’s—" He sighs, sounds a little disbelieving when he says, “Adam. Just. He asked me out.”

“…Like on a date?” Keith asks reluctantly.

“Yeah, like on a date,” Shiro says, the corner of his mouth twitching up in amusement, and instantly Keith feels like such a _child_. He stifles the urge to tell Shiro to shut up_,_ tries to act at least his damn age.

“So…what did you say?”

Maybe Shiro can hear the plaintive tone in Keith’s voice that he’s trying to erase, because he looks away and says, “I, uh. I said yes. We’re going to meet at the grill on Tuesday and have dinner.”

Shiro has a way of being wary at the same time that he’s pleased when it’s something important to him, and Keith can read it in his profile like an open book. God, Shiro really wants this to go well, and something in Keith curls, cringes, at the knowledge. He has to unlock his teeth to say this next part, has to push the words out from his chest.

“I hope you have a good time,” Keith manages, hates the way that Shiro can’t help the little smile, hates that he’s still happy for him.

Shiro throws another look back at the base, seemingly unable to stop himself, and says, “Thanks. I hope so too.” 

*

Shiro had said yes to Adam in a bit of a daze, before he’d thought about it too much, leapt right off that cliff because _why not?_

Shiro knows he isn’t an impulsive person. He’s just decisive. He’d decided a long time ago that he wouldn’t hide away from good things that come across his path, not if they’re uncomplicated, not if they make him feel alive. There’s just no _time_ for anything else, and there’s no reason for him to say no.

Besides. Adam is smart, and handsome, and it’s been a while since Shiro felt attracted to someone like this, felt that attraction reciprocated.

It’s just a fact that not every man who catches his eye is interested in other men, and Shiro hasn’t always been lucky on that front. He spent a lot of high school and after pining quietly for guys who turned out to be either straight or uninterested, and this is, refreshingly, not at all like that. Adam is almost direct to a fault, speaks plainly about what he wants, and Shiro finds himself charmed.

He finds himself wanting to give it a chance.

*

Keith feels like he’s failed something.

It’s not just that he’s not at the same level as someone like Shiro, not even in the same realm, and that there are some territories in Shiro’s life where he doesn’t belong. Keith had already _known_ all that. The failure is that he thought he’d really, finally pushed his fixation down and away, had denied it enough that that fire had cooled to ash. But no. There’s still heat there, enough for the flames of rejection to flare up and burn him all over again, even though he’d thought he’d resigned himself.

He feels like a dumb kid, like all the stupid teenagers in movies who don’t know what they shouldn’t hope for. But he won’t act like one. He _won’t_. It doesn’t matter how much it still stings that he doesn’t know the rules of this, doesn’t even grasp the categories—that he understands only enough to know how much he _isn’t_ a blip on Shiro’s radar—because more than anything Keith can’t stand the thought of disappointing him.

So he’s going to suck it up. He’s going to act like a fucking adult.

He’s going to do what Shiro taught him to do, which is apply some goddamned patience. He’s going to focus on the good things and swallow his own sense of inadequacy, because this isn’t about him. He’s going to do better, be better, because Shiro deserves better. Shiro doesn’t deserve some self-serving tag-along, some fan-boy hound. Shiro deserves a real friend, and he deserves to be happy, full fucking stop.

This was never his to begin with, Keith tells himself, and he can do without. 

When he sees Shiro on Wednesday, he’s going to force himself to ask how his date went. He’s going to be content with how Shiro’s face is going to light up when he answers.

*

Dinner at the grill with Adam is fun, that mix of awkward and sweet peculiar to first dates that Shiro had almost forgotten the taste of. Adam keeps calling him _Takashi_ and he doesn’t even mind. 

It’s been a long time since he did anything like this.

And maybe what happened in the lab with Keith brought back some memories. Keith isn’t that much younger than him, but Shiro remembers being that age like it was a different life, remembers being nervous and unsure and clumsy, remembers the ache of uncertainty and the thrill of daring to get closer. He’s more experienced now, thankfully, and that kind of blind fumbling is largely behind him, but he’d felt such a wave of pained sympathy, of empathy for Keith, who had kissed Shiro in a flash of desperate and unsophisticated longing.

It had made Shiro realize that he was lonelier than he’d thought.

He’d missed closeness, missed _sex_.

So it’s easy to fall into something with Adam, to say yes to another dinner, to more time together, to fall into his space and then into bed with him.

For a while it feels simple to give and take like this.

It feels uncomplicated.

*

By the time his seventeenth birthday comes and goes—with the hoverbikes parked behind them, the cliff edge rough against the backs of their knees where they’ve dangled their feet over, and Shiro grinning over the tiny cheesecake he’d pulled out of his pack, a tiny sparkler stuck into the centre of it—Keith feels like he’s starting to find an equilibrium.

He’ll be there for Shiro however he can, will enjoy his company however Shiro will give it. The want is still a furnace in him, a beating heart, but he’s learning to temper it into other things, burn out what’s impure.

He focuses on making Shiro proud when he makes it through his week-long outdoor survival training, when he marathons sims until his brain feels like it’s coming out his ears and his name seems like it’s glued to the top of the leader board.

He tries to remember every little thing Shiro’s ever told him to keep in mind when he’s finally in the air for his very first live-flight test. It’s exhilarating to finally be above the earth, to finally be in the air and have the controls in his own hands, but the look on Shiro’s face afterward when he can tell him he aced it is just as good.

And every time Shiro claps him on the back and gives him a rough hug of congratulations, he feels the painful pull still, but it’s not more powerful than the warm surge of gratitude, of pride, of happiness.

He’s in Shiro’s life. Shiro is his brother, his family. It’s more than he’s had since his dad died, and it’s slowly becoming enough.

It’s enough.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms and Saints by Florence and the Machine.
> 
> In my mind, the Garrison is not the military as we know it, so they don’t have the same strict anti-fraternization rules even if they’re under some kind of body of military law. I had to imagine what a military-ish but not actually military organization would consider inappropriate, and what kind of institutional structures would reflect that. Also, it’s the future and I wanted to imagine a military-ish organization that’s waaaay not hetero-normative or homophobic, so I just left that flavour of conflict out completely. It was hella satisfying. 
> 
> Also, in a hilarious happenstance, my actual birthday is the same as Keith's canonical birthday, October 23rd. But I didn't know that until I'd already decided I needed him to have a spring birthday in this fic. Keith could also be an Aries, right?


	5. Acceleration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Are y'all ready for more Difficult Conversations? I certainly hope so, because they're just going to keep coming!
> 
> Extra special HUGS to my beta Sarah for so freely lending her perspective and helping to make this story more Real. Without her, so many aspects of this fic would be just me flailing around in the dark, merely speculating. Thanks for your illumination <3

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**5: Acceleration**

_You saw the stars out in front of you  
Too tempting not to touch  
  
_

*

Shiro doesn’t think he’s ever enjoyed the slide of late spring into early summer as much as he’s enjoying it now. There’s been something steady about the rhythm of his days lately, something even and easy. Getting through his duties feels like ticking through a pre-flight checklist, and it’s as familiar as it is quietly gratifying.

It’s not that he’s at leisure, or that he has a lot of free time, because he isn’t and he doesn’t. He’s still busy, his schedule full from morning until evening, but everything feels like it’s in its place.

He wakes up four minutes before his alarm, whether he’s in his own bed or in Adam’s. He could get through his morning routine with his eyes closed. He could find his uniform in the dark and put it on one handed, and depending on how much earlier he needs to be up than Adam and how stiff his right hand is that day, sometimes he does. He knows, simply by instinct, what corner he has to walk around to find Keith coming the other way. Whatever problem Iverson barks at him to deal with, he seems to be able to solve it without breaking stride.

Shiro realizes, halfway through keying in the next set of sim levels for an intermediate cadet class from memory, that there’s a part of him that feels almost… content.

Settled.

Like this kind of life could be enough.

That night, he has vivid nightmares of drowning in earth, of being suffocated, dragged down away from the sky, from all light and air. Shiro wakes in an icy sweat, shaking, unable to catch his breath, both hands prickling painfully and the knot in his chest twisting so hard that it hurts.

Adam stirs next to him and hums a questioning noise, still mostly asleep. Shiro feels something sting inside at the sight of him, bed-rumpled and blindly reaching out a hand to him. He takes it, lets himself hold on for a moment, squeezing gently, trying to steady himself. But then he tucks Adam’s hand back under the covers, tells him _it’s fine, don’t worry about it_, watches him sink back down into sleep.

Skin still clammy and his heart still racing, Shiro gets dressed as quietly as he can in the pre-dawn light and presents himself at the earliest possible hour to the Mission Planning office.

When the administration assistant glances meaningfully at the clock and then asks him his business, Shiro tells him he needs to inquire with Commander Holt about the status of his application to the Kerberos mission.

When he’s informed that the Commander might not be in for another hour, Shiro tells him that he’ll wait.

*

Keith tries, he really does, but sometimes his pettiness comes out when Adam’s around. Not in front of Shiro, never under that censure, but lately Shiro has been pulled away from his usual duties more and more often for special training and that means he and Adam are alone together more than both of them would like. 

For what feels like the tenth time this week, Keith manages to track Shiro down to try to spend some time with him, only to have Shiro leave. Within minutes, it seems, Shiro’s PD is chiming and he’s excusing himself with a regretful, distracted smile and giving Adam an apologetic parting touch on the shoulder.

They both watch him go. Adam looks as put out as Keith feels. 

“He’s been working too hard,” he says, half to himself.

“He’s a hard worker,” Keith says.

And then they’re just kind of… staring at each other.

Adam isn’t unkind, and thankfully he doesn’t try to treat Keith like an underling or a child, but the man clearly doesn’t know what to do with Keith being in Shiro’s life, and that can rankle. He just always seems slightly confused by Keith’s presence, and some days that’s fine and some days that’s like sparks across Keith’s gasoline temper.

Today, Keith feels like it could go either way.

Adam finally sighs, takes off his glasses to rub at his eyes.

“He didn’t even eat this,” he says, poking at the paper plate of lasagna and fries cooling in front of the empty space where Shiro had been sitting. There’s frustration in his voice. “I just wish he would take better care of himself. I try to at least make sure he gets some lunch.”

“…He likes burritos,” Keith says, and feels like a bit of a shit for his tone.

Adam looks at him with both eyebrows raised.

The man teaches mostly avionics and mechanical design, Keith knows, the kind of topics that engineers need and which Keith has never taken. He hears that Adam can be a bit of a hard-ass with the cadets in his class, though, and he wonders if he’s finally gone too far. He hopes not, but only for Shiro’s sake.

“Burritos,” Adam says.

“Yeah,” Keith says.

There’s a fierce and quick battle across Adam’s expression, and Keith sees something almost like embarrassment win out before he covers it by putting his glasses back on.

“Alright, what kind of burritos?” he says, and Keith very carefully doesn’t smirk.

“Lucia’s Cantina. It’s near the base. But anything wrapped. He likes it spicy. Burritos, samosas, roti, banh mi. Whatever he can take with him.” 

Adam’s nodding like he’s taking mental notes, and Keith almost feels bad. Not enough to stay and try to talk more, though. He figures Adam should do his own homework when it comes to Shiro’s preferences, and that Keith should make his exit before things get too awkward.

He stands to leave, but Adam stops him.

“Hey, do you want this?” he says, and points to the lasagna. “It would be a waste to throw it out. It’s decent this week.”

Keith considers it for a second, recognizes it for the peace gesture it is.

“Thanks,” Keith says, and finds he actually means it. “But it’s okay. It’s yours.”

*

Things had been uncomplicated.

They had been simple, and they had been _good_—

But then Adam sees him wince in pain after leaving his cuff on the nightstand for too long, and something in Shiro starts counting down. Only days later, Adam notices Shiro’s hands shaking after a long set of flight drills they’re assigned together and Shiro deflects, deflects, deflects—

He knows—he _knows_—that he can’t keep his symptoms out of sight for long. For almost a week, Adam doesn’t bring it up. The silence of him not asking about it becomes deafening.

Shiro had hoped that maybe the imminent exam season would keep the fallout of all this at bay, but even under the end of semester workload of his classes—or maybe because of it—Adam finally reaches some kind of breaking point. Concerned and exasperated, he finds Shiro in his room and confronts him about it directly.

Shiro should have known something likes this would happen, and it seems almost inevitable that what starts as a tense discussion snowballs into a raised-voices, honest-to-god _fight_.

Adam demands to know what the hell is going on with him, why he’s in such pain, what’s wrong with his hands. Why Commander Holt keeps giving him orders to report to medical, but then also orders him to report for even more training, more evaluations, more discussions behind closed doors and presumably even more missions. He just wants to know _why._ Why Shiro keeps pushing, pushing, _pushing_ himself, what they’re asking of him and why Shiro isn’t _telling_ him anything. He just wants to know what’s going on because he wants to _help_—

And Shiro finally admits that he’s been training so hard because he’s seriously in the running to pilot the mission to Kerberos. That this has been a possibility since the fall, since long before Adam even came to the base. That Shiro hasn’t said anything to anyone because this mission is _important_—it’s his dream of walking on earth that’s not Earth, offered up all at once—and he had wanted to be absolutely _sure_. That he’s been waiting for this since he was seventeen, and nothing is going to stop him from giving his all just for the _chance_—

“But you’re hurting yourself,” Adam says, pressing his point _again_. “This training is hurting you—"

“It’s not the training!” Shiro finally snaps, and then it’s like the sound drops out of the world, because Shiro realizes what he just said and—

“Then what is it?” Adam snaps back.

There it is. The direct question, the corner that Shiro has backed himself into. Every second of silence where Shiro doesn’t answer him is more damage—to this conversation, to what’s between them—but Shiro can’t bring himself to _say_ it.

That’s the goddamned _rule_. 

But Adam is a damnably intelligent man, and it only takes him a moment to piece together what Shiro doesn’t want to have to say.

“Takashi,” Adam says, and Shiro flinches at the sound of his own first name, hates hearing it right now, hates hearing it in that fearful tone. “What’s wrong? Are you—Jesus, are you _sick?_”

Hearing the bare truth out loud, it cracks through him like he’s breaking glass, and it opens up the dark, writhing, desperate thing in his chest. For a second it overwhelms him. Frantic despair and _rage_—_it’s not fair, __it’s not fair_—but there’s no point. Adam _knows_ what’s going on. He’s seen the confirmation of it in Shiro’s face, the question answered without words. It’s too late to deflect anymore, too late to deny, and he has to say something or this whole thing is going to crash and burn in a way that Shiro knows he won’t be able to forgive himself for.

Shiro can barely hear his own voice over the rushing in his ears, but the words ‘degenerative neuromuscular disorder’ come out clearly enough. He offers up what Adam hadn’t known he’d been demanding, which is a list of deeply unpleasant facts about worsening symptoms and increasingly ineffective treatments.

Shiro doesn’t give him the full prognosis, though, doesn’t even tell him the technical name of the disease. He lies by omission, uses words like ‘decrease’ instead of ‘irreversible loss’, ‘difficulty’ instead of ‘atrophy’ and ‘failure’. 

‘Life threatening’ instead of ‘terminal’.

And Shiro watches even just the partial truth hurt Adam, land on him like slabs of rock, getting heavier and heavier the more Shiro tells him. Shock, then fear, then pain, then anger. 

Adam is _angry,_ most of all because Shiro didn’t tell him. He doesn’t understand why Shiro would ever keep this from anyone, tells him he’s stubborn and childish for refusing to ‘face reality’, to seek more support.

The dark, lashing knot inside Shiro reacts badly to this—_very_ badly—and Shiro’s own anger spills out, unrestrained. Shiro fiercely defends his choices and his privacy. He tries to make Adam understand how _shit_ it feels to have the people around him treat him like a fucking—

_Invalid_.

‘Dead man walking’ is what he doesn’t say, because _god damn it_ he has a right to keep his own deadline to himself. It’s his fucking body, he doesn’t need to tell anyone that it’s got a fucking expiry date. He can’t stand being a walking tragedy, can’t stand his own end being reflected back at him in the eyes of the people he cares about. 

He just wants time to live the way he wants until he can’t anymore.

“This is hard enough as it is!” Shiro is yelling, when did he start yelling? “I didn’t want to put you through this! It’s already happening to me. That’s enough. It doesn’t need to happen to anyone else, too.”

And the last thing Shiro expects is for the anger to drain out of Adam’s face, out of his whole countenance, like water down the drain, until all that’s left is a kind of tender agony that Shiro can barely stand to look at. 

“_Takashi_,” Adam says, and then he’s crossing the space between them to throw his arms around Shiro’s shoulders, holding him tightly. Shiro can feel the solid warmth of him, the desperate way he grips the back of Shiro’s jacket, and—Shiro realizes, all at once, that he’s made a grave miscalculation.

This was never going to be simple.

Adam never wanted something uncomplicated.

But Shiro had walked into it anyway, half blind with assumptions and unwilling to see it. God, he’d been so _careless_. He’s made such a mess, and now Adam is in that mess with him. He doesn’t know what to do from here. He doesn’t know how to get Adam out of this patch of thorns, not if Adam keeps wading in deeper. 

This is why he’d made _rules_. This never should have happened. 

“I _have_ to do this,” Shiro says, helplessly, hoping wildly—unkindly—that Adam might feel left behind enough to let go of him, to walk away from him. “I _need_ to get to Kerberos.” 

“Nobody flies alone,” Adam says, muffled a little in Shiro’s collar, “not even you.” 

“…This isn’t fair,” Shiro says, and his throat is too tight. “You—you never signed up for this.”

The arms around him squeeze him even closer.

“_Please_,” Adam says, “just—let me help. Let me try.”

For a second, Shiro wants to say _no, you can’t do this, not for a broken thing like me_. For a second, Shiro wants to do the right thing, wants to tell him _I’m dying by inches and I can’t give you a future_.

But Adam is warm, and here, and a reckless little bolt of hope snaps across his heart, and he thinks _maybe this will be okay_. For the second time, Shiro finds himself wanting to give this a chance.

Shiro’s arms come up around Adam’s back, tentatively, and he dares to hold him for a little while longer. 

* 

Keith finds out like everyone else does—from the TV news feed.

_—has announced that Commander Samuel Holt is set to lead the upcoming mission to Kerberos as science officer and engineer, along with Graduate Cadet Matthew Holt as communications officer and Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane as pilot. The mission will make its way to the outer solar system past the orbit of Neptune and into the Kuiper Belt region— _

Absently, Keith realizes that he’s going to be late for his tactical intercepts review session, but he doesn’t care. He’s already racing to Shiro’s office to congratulate him. When he gets there he almost crashes into Shiro’s desk in his haste, nearly overturns all of Shiro’s paperwork.

“Whoa! Hey! Keith, watch it—"

“You got it!” Keith almost shouts, delighted. “You got the Kerberos mission! You must have been training already for _months_, I didn’t even know you’d _applied_—”

He’s bursting with joy for him, at the way Shiro can’t help but laugh and grin back at him.

“You’re going to be the first pilot to fly the _Tyche_ and the first person to set foot on a moon in the Kuiper belt! Shiro, that’s _amazing!_” 

“Okay, okay,” Shiro says, and Keith must be really overdoing it because Shiro’s still chuckling. “Calm down a little, alright?”

“How are _you_ calm?” Keith demands, “How are you not freaking out right now? You’ve wanted this for _ages_—”

And Keith is caught by a shift in Shiro’s face, sees something in his eyes that doesn’t make sense, because it’s—gratitude. Shiro is looking at him like he’s actually _grateful_ that Keith smashed into the room like an overexcited tornado. It makes something too warm, too bright flash in his chest, and Keith realizes he’s too close to Shiro, leaning too far over the desk. With a swoop of mixed heat and alarm in his belly, he gets a hold of himself and pulls back, pulls away.

Keith clears his throat, and with maybe the most sincerity he’s ever put into the gesture, he salutes.

“Congratulations, Sir,” he says, and he hopes Shiro can hear how much he means it. 

“Thanks, Cadet,” Shiro says, smiling warmly, and he returns the salute with an easy flick of his wrist. “It’s going to be a hell of a long ride, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Right.

_Shit_.

Keith hadn’t even stayed to hear how long the mission was going to be. It must be a least nine months, even with the _Tyche_’s state of the art propulsion system. It’s the fastest ever put on a manned spacecraft, but—no, with Pluto’s current position it must be at least—

“A year?” Keith asks, and something in his stomach drops as the brightness of Shiro’s smile dims a little.

“Thirteen months,” Shiro says. “That’s including the time we need to get all the most important ice core samples and observations done. There’s some flex for that, though, if everything goes right. The way the orbits are right now, we’ve got a pretty generous return window, so in the right conditions we can take a little extra time.”

“So… a year.”

“Yeah. At least.”

“Adam’s going to miss you.”

Keith had meant it as a light comment, a gentle jibe, but Shiro looks away, his gaze flitting across the mussed-up papers on his desktop. 

“I know,” Shiro says, and his tone and his smile are still pleasant, but Keith can tell he’s just found a sore spot and poked it. 

“You’ll be great,” Keith says, flailing for something less tactless to say. “I… know you’ll be great.”

Maybe it works, because Shiro’s surface-only smile becomes a little more genuine again. “You’re going to start your exams soon, right?” he says, gently but definitively steering them to a new topic. “It’s going to be your last year as a cadet after this. What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

“Get ready,” Keith says simply, without thinking. 

“For what?” Shiro says, and his tone is both amused and curious. 

“Space,” he says, and shrugs. “If I’m going to break all your records, I’d better get busy.”

He’d been half joking, but Shiro looks up at him with sudden intensity. There’s something almost evaluating about Shiro’s expression, something searching in his gaze that softens into satisfaction. Trust. Anticipation. A chill goes up Keith’s spine that he can’t explain. He stands a little straighter, coming—almost without realizing it—to attention.

“I’m going up there with you someday,” Keith says. “Sir.”

“_Good_,” Shiro says, with a quiet gravity that Keith doesn’t fully understand. Then Shiro smiles, and it’s the smile he uses when they’re racing the hoverbikes out in the wilderness. There’s an edge of challenge to it. “I’ll see you up there soon, Cadet.”

*

Shiro had hoped that finally getting accepted for the Kerberos mission might ease some of the pressure, but that’s not what happens. His training only intensifies, and all that extra exertion and strain starts to take its toll on his condition.

Everything aches, all the time, and it seems like both of his hands are numb and prickly now more often than they’re not. The cuff still keeps the muscle spasms from debilitating his right arm, but it doesn’t do much to dampen the growing nerve pain that spikes up to his elbow. When the Garrison staff doctors ask—and they do ask, watching him like a goddamned hawk—he keeps his face perfectly neutral and rates his discomfort at a two out of ten. When a senior officer makes a comment—and it seems they always do—he simply directs their attention to the fact that his lefthanded sim scores for all major scenarios are now almost identical to his righthanded ones. 

All of it, though, is nothing to the excitement building up in his belly, the impatience in his bones. He’s going to go up farther, _faster_, and the tangled knot that lives in his chest is almost _singing_.

It drives him hard, gives him a kind of relentless energy. It keeps him on top of the flood of mission prep—helps him keep up with Matt Holt’s hyper-focused technical chatter and Sam Holt’s strict insistence on running all procedures over and over until they’re pure instinct—but he knows it’s also pushing beyond his crew onto the people around him and that’s… not good enough.

Shiro feels like he should be able to stay amiable under pressure, but as his schedule becomes more and more frenetic, his moods become all-or-nothing—his focus becomes too narrowed—in a way that he can’t seem to help, and he knows he’s not always good company. There’s no time to slow down, though, the margins of his life not wide enough right now to back up, take a breath, and really apologize.

He feels especially guilty for the way Adam has to struggle to keep up with him on top of his other responsibilities, even as he’s impressed with how well Adam manages it all. Shiro wishes there were more hours in the day, more spaces for them to try to be together, but with Kerberos looming on his horizon, pulling him forward, there’s nothing he can do.

They don’t talk as much as they should.

Shiro knows this, even as he lets his need get the better of him and what little time alone they have is usually spent in bed rather than in conversation. Adam isn’t complaining about _that_, at least, seems to fall into sex as readily as Shiro does. 

And despite Shiro’s reluctance, Adam proves to be an attentive partner when it comes to Shiro’s health. Sandwiches get pressed into his hands the instant he says he’s hungry. Boxes of steaming samosas sit waiting on his desk, topped with notes reminding him to eat with his meds. Even hot burritos from Lucia’s Cantina are dropped in front of him with a knowing smile and a satisfied little _I heard you like these_.

Even as the exam season begins and things get even busier, Adam’s clearly paying attention whenever Shiro mentions something about his symptoms or his doctor appointments, reminds him about his doses and his exercises. Adam even does his own research into these kinds of illnesses and offers up the latest clinical findings and medical understanding on the subject. He puts it all into a document for him, all colour coded and notated and carefully organized, his own suggestions highlighted.

It’s sweet until it isn’t, since sometimes Adam’s habit of certainty can make him come off a bit… overprotective, even sanctimonious. The way he says _Takashi_ in that certain tone of voice can be too much like how his mother used to say it after the worst medical appointments. And Shiro knows that Adam is only behaving the way he is because of assumptions that Shiro gave him, but Shiro can’t—_won’t_—tell him everything. That final inch is _his_, and he’ll keep it any way he can.

Even if it makes Adam more and more frustrated.

Even if it makes them fight more and more often.

When Shiro’s personal doctor asks him to consider allowing her to disclose his new, more intensive treatment plan to his partner, he can’t bring himself to say yes. 

*

Keith has seen Shiro far less often than he’d like, lately, but getting through his exams has been keeping things hectic, and besides. He knows how much Shiro has to do to get ready for the launch, and it would be undeniably selfish of him if he thought he should get any more of Shiro’s time right now. As it is, he’s grateful to get one last weekend outing with him, one more race before Shiro’s into quarantine and then off planet for an entire year.

They go out on the hoverbikes, tracing their favourite courses in dusty lines over the reddish sunbaked landscape, and this time Keith can barely keep up to Shiro. More than he ever has, Shiro pushes his big red bike, pushes the limits of what’s safe, and no matter how much Shiro goads him—his voice and his smile both edged with something a little feral, a little speed-drunk—Keith just can’t bring himself to open the throttle as hard as usual.

He wants to keep Shiro in front of him, keep him in his sight.

There’s been so much going on lately, and Shiro’s been anticipating being off planet so intently that he seems half off the ground already. Keith doesn’t begrudge him being preoccupied, not at all. He _knows_ how much Kerberos means to Shiro, how long he’s waited for this opportunity, and no matter how much he’s dreading all that time alone, Keith is excited for him.

He _knows_ this is what Shiro wants, it’s just…

Is this really making Shiro happy?

The thought has been seeping in from the corners, coming to him more and more often, but Keith barely even lets the question form silently in his mind. He won’t say anything, won’t even contemplate it. Shiro knows himself, as much as Keith knows his own mind, and if this is what Shiro has decided for himself, then Keith has no reason to question that.

Eventually, the race dies down—Shiro won, of course, which is only right—and they come to a stop down on the sandy flats of the canyon bed. Side by side, they stand facing fully into the streaming light of the sunset. Shiro doesn’t say anything, and Keith is happy to keep this silence until the sun is long gone and the moon rises if that’s what Shiro wants right now.

But then Keith feels… _something_.

It’s almost magnetic. Physical. _Gravitational_.

He feels it in his body, in his gut and his inner ear, but it’s diffuse, unfocused, and Keith is left feeling like he’s spinning in place, facing the wrong way no matter where he turns—

Keith doesn’t realize that he’s scanning the horizon all around them, eyes darting, searching for the source of this… _feeling…_ until Shiro’s voice pulls him out of it.

“Keith? Buddy? What’re you looking for?”

“Nothing,” Keith says, snaps his attention back to the purpling sunset, to the moment he’s trying to savour. But he still feels ever so slightly disoriented, like something in his bones is spinning while the rest of him is still.

What the hell is this?

_Maybe I’m finally going crazy,_ he thinks, a little wildly. Maybe he’s gotten so twisted up about Shiro being gone for so long that his mind is playing tricks on his sense of direction.

“Do you ever… feel like something out here is… pulling you?” Keith says, and he realizes as he’s saying it that this isn’t even the first time he’s felt this…_ thing_ out here. Shiro laughs softly and Keith immediately feels embarrassed for bringing it up, for trying to put it into words at all.

“The call of the unknown is strong,” Shiro says, and Keith honest-to-god can’t tell if it’s a genuine, profound statement, or if he’s just being teased.

“Call of the unknown,” Keith echoes, flatly, feeling his ears getting hot. “Right. Sounds like a bad adventure novel.” 

Shiro laughs a little, but then sobers. “I don’t know,” he says thoughtfully, and he tips his head up to where the sky is finally darkening and the stars are starting to come out. “I’m feeling pretty… called.”

_This dork_, Keith thinks, and something swift and pained goes through his heart. He wants to remember this moment, wants to burn it exactly into his memory. He wants every detail etched in light across the backs of his eyes. He wants to be able to see the world like Shiro does, even when Shiro’s not around. 

Keith watches him watching the sky, and he feels fourteen again, standing before something great and big and just out of reach. He feels himself spun again, tilting, but _this_ is familiar now, nothing new. _This_ is just what it’s like being around Shiro, and Keith doesn’t know what it’s going to be like living without this for an entire year. He wishes—so fervently that it almost _burns_—that he didn’t have to find out.

But Shiro deserves to be happy.

Full stop.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear, I’m not arguing that hiding things from your loved ones about your health is the right thing to do. I’m not arguing that telling your loved ones absolutely everything about your health is the right thing to do either. These characters are making assumptions and judgment calls that may or may not be appropriate in any given real life situation. I’m just exploring, not concluding. 
> 
> Although seriously, don’t do what Shiro does and tell your doctor that your pain is a two out of ten when it’s more like a nine, it doesn’t help anything. I’ve heard it’s a very fly-boy, tough-ass thing to do, though. Like, moondust is a serious irritant to human tissues and so abrasive that it can wear through Kevlar-type space suit fabric, but the only Apollo astronaut who ever admitted to any symptoms from inhaling what’s essentially powdered glass was a geologist, not a military pilot. Go figure. 
> 
> Also, I do really feel for Adam. He's just doing his best, and his boyfriend is Takashi 'Pluto or Bust' Shirogane, aka a handful. Poor guy.


	6. Collision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all ready for some s*** to hit the fan? I certainly hope so!
> 
> Many and numerous thanks to my amazing beta Sarah for all her feedback and long sufferance of my insistence that this isn't 'angsty' when it clearly, clearly is. HUGS <3

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**6: Collision**

_I know you're bleeding, but you'll be okay_   
_Hold on to your heart, you'll keep it safe_   
_Hold on to your heart, don't give it away_

*

And then—

“Lieutenant Shirogane, sorry to interrupt. You are to report immediately to Admiral Sanda."

— everything goes sideways. 

Apparently the Admiral is on base, which is enough to fill the halls with a hushed tension that spreads like wildfire. As Shiro follows the other officer—his insignias announce him as a Junior Aide to the Admiralty—there’s a ripple outward from them both, a wave of people suddenly smartening up and straightening uniforms. Shiro only has the presence of mind to wonder vaguely how presentable he is before apprehension sinks in—real and biting—and he forgets about anything else.

There are only a handful of reasons why the Admiral would come here unscheduled, and there’s really only one reason why she would need to speak to him specifically, especially with less than a week until launch. 

The knot in his chest clenches, and twists, and _roils_— 

By the time he’s being ushered into the staff offices where the Admiral is waiting, he feels ill with adrenalin and dread, but he manages to salute, his body on a kind of deadened autopilot.

Admiral Sanda doesn’t say anything, just looks him over, and the sensation is like being raked with something cold. She doesn’t say anything, and it isn’t until Shiro hears footsteps behind him that he realizes that she’s waiting for someone else.

Commander Holt is brought in to stand next to him, and out of the corner of his eye Shiro watches him salute too. A spike of alarm goes through him, because Sam looks both uncertain and unhappy, and that can only mean that this whole situation is seriously bad news.

Admiral Sanda takes her time giving Sam the cold once over too. Then she starts talking, and every word is like a needle into the heart of Shiro’s hopes.

_Questionable judgement_ is the opening shot fired, as much at Sam as at Shiro. Then _personal biases_, _unacceptable risks_, _jeopardize the mission_ and—

_Unsuitable candidate_.

The tangled thing in Shiro’s chest starts to keen, desperately, to _howl_—

*

When Keith overhears some of the other cadets in the library chattering excitedly that Admiral Sanda is on base, he doesn’t even bother to look up from his practice problem set.

Catching sight of high command bigwigs is something of a sport among the lower ranks, and one that Keith has never had any interest in. He tries to ignore the commotion, tries to stay dutifully tuned in to his review—he has to get through this before his last exam early tomorrow morning—but fragments of talk still manage to filter into his awareness. As the chatter gets more and more loud and more and more distracting, he finally has to give up.

Keith seriously contemplates throwing his pencil at the back of the worst offender—a skinny brown-haired kid in his cohort who’s as loudmouthed as he is overdramatic—but then he hears the guy say Shiro’s name and he forgets about everything else. He’s standing before he realizes it, walking towards the little knot of cadets gathered around him.

“You,” Keith says. “What did you say about Shiro?”

The guy’s shoulders ratchet up to his ears at the sound of Keith’s voice, and he turns, eyebrows arched high. Then he smirks and drops his hands to his hips in a pose that would radiate more bravado if his elbows didn’t flap quite so much.

“_Well._ If it isn’t mister hot shot,” he says in a sing-song, self-satisfied tone of voice, and Keith immediately regrets this whole course of action. Almost before he can blink—never mind reply—the guy is already talking again. “_Eavesdropping_, apparently, listening in even though you always pretend not to. Too good for that kind of thing, usually, but _oh no_, not _today_ it seems. Don’t have enough to do? Don’t even have to study, I suppose, mister _I get all the high scores_. You gotta listen in on my conversations instead, hmm? Just gotta horn in on my _scene_, don’t you?”

The big cadet that’s always with him puts a hand over his eyes with a sigh.

“_Lance_—” he says, with long suffering exasperation, but even he’s cut off.

“No no no, I wanna hear this. I wanna hear what he has to say for himself for busting in on this _private discussion_.”

Keith can feel himself scowl. This is why he never tries to talk to anyone.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” he says. “I don’t have to. You’re really loud.” 

“_Hey_—”

“Dude’s got a point, man,” the big guy says. “Your inside voice is, like, ninety decibels. Ninety _five_.”

“That’s not true!”

“It _so is_,” another cadet chimes in, her high ponytail wiggling as she nods.

“Yeah, he’s like a human megaphone,” says a fourth cadet next to her, and they both laugh.

“_Come on_, guys,” the skinny guy says, and he actually looks embarrassed. He turns to his big friend. “That’s not true, is it?”

“I’m gonna measure it someday.”

“Oh go measure _yourself_, Hunk!”

“That doesn’t even—"

“_Look_,” Keith snaps, “I don’t care. I just want to know what you heard about Shiro.” 

“_Lieutenant Shirogane_, you mean,” the skinny guy says morosely, put out by the teasing. “Jeez, you of all people get to hang out with him, least you could do is show some _respect_—”

_You of all people._

Keith very consciously loosens his hands from where they’d tightened into fists at his sides, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. The loudmouth doesn’t seem to see it, but the big guy’s eyes track the movement and he holds up a placating hand.

“Hey, okay. Chill. We’d be happy to share,” he says. “All we heard was that the Admiral’s actually, really here on base and that ten minutes ago one of her people was seen bringing the Lieutenant to a meeting somewhere in the staff offices. Or something.”

“_Definitely_ a personal meeting with the Admiral,” the other guy says, some of his swagger coming back. “Like a _secret_ meeting where I bet they’re gonna promote him to Lieutenant Commander right before the Kerberos launch—”

“That’s unconfirmed,” the big guy says, putting both hands up. “Like, _totally_ unconfirmed. Lance, stop making stuff up.”

“I’m _not_. It’s just the logical conclusion, I’m _telling_ you—"

The big guy sighs, then glances back at Keith. “We cool?” he says, almost hopefully. Like maybe he can’t wait for Keith to go.

“Sure,” Keith says, clipped. “_Thanks_.” 

He turns on his heel, swipes up his papers and books, and shoves everything in his bag as he leaves the library. He doesn’t look back, but he can feel eyes on him. 

*

The other cadets seemed to think that the Admiral wanting to speak to Shiro could only be a good thing, but Keith has a whisper of unease in his gut, the tiniest bloom of misgiving. He follows the feeling all the way through the hallways until he’s slipping into the staff section of the building.

He turns the last corner, and—

Voices other than Shiro’s are coming out of Shiro’s office. _Raised_ voices, irritated and tense, and just that is enough for Keith to flatten himself up against the wall.

“—the _only_ candidate who more than exceeds all the skill and training criteria required—”

It’s an older man, and he’s speaking in the tones of someone who is seriously taken aback but trying to stay reasonable. It’s familiar, somehow. Keith _knows_ he knows that voice, and—it’s _Commander Holt_, he realizes. It’s Shiro’s commanding officer, the leader of the Kerberos mission. Keith checks all around him, makes sure he’s the only one in sight, and then edges closer to the open door.

“—every assessment the Garrison has thrown at him, and Shiro’s still the right pilot for the mission. We _need_ him for Kerberos—”

Keith’s heart gives a jolt at the mention of Shiro’s name.

“_No_,” a woman says, sharply. “Absolutely not.”

This voice is vehement and authoritative, cutting through whatever Commander Holt is trying to say, and the hair on the back of Keith’s neck stands up because _that’s Admiral goddamned Sanda_. 

The big guy was right, and the loudmouth definitely wasn’t.

What the hell is going on?

“Why _not_?” he hears Commander Holt counter. “He’s passed all his physicals. Our flight surgeon cleared him already, at every stage of mission prep. With all due respect, Admiral, if the surgeon has no reason to pull Shiro as a candidate—”

“I don’t care what the doctor says!” the Admiral snaps. “This man is _sick_, and he shouldn’t be sent on another mission, especially one as far as Kerberos—”

Keith’s thoughts go white and horribly blank for a second, unable to process what he just heard. He can’t hear through the sudden ringing in his ears, through the air rushing in and out of his chest. He clamps a hand over his mouth to stifle the noise, tries to focus.

_“_—have to report this to Flight Command,” the Admiral finishes.

“Shiro is the best pilot in the Garrison by far,” Commander Holt says, and he sounds _riled_, finally. “He’s saved my bacon in deep space more times than I can count. So if he doesn't go on this mission, then neither do I.”

There’s a moment of terrible silence.

“You may report _that_ to Flight Command, if you so wish,” the Commander says, more calmly. By some miracle his tone isn’t insubordinate, not even impolite. “I don’t trust anyone else at the controls half as much as I trust Shiro. My reasons why are already detailed in my reports to Mission Planning. You and Commander Iverson may disagree with my choice of pilot, but this is my mission, and unless there are grounds to remove me from my command, then you’ll excuse me, but it remains my call.”

There’s another pause. 

“Then it’s on your shoulders,” the Admiral says, and she does _not_ sound happy. “Flight Command will hear that I didn’t approve of this, but Kerberos will go ahead with the crew you’ve chosen, Commander. If this is going to be another Meridian Four, then that’s _your_ legacy to live with.”

“Admiral Sanda, I—”

“This discussion is _closed_, Lieutenant Shirogane. I believe I made my thoughts perfectly clear. There can be no help for you out there in the Kuiper belt. Don’t get your crew killed.”

“…I _won’t_, Sir.” 

That was _Shiro’s_ voice, calm enough on the surface, but Keith has never heard him sound so twisted up underneath, so _frustrated_—

There’s the sound of boot heels coming towards the door, towards where he’s ducked only barely out of sight, and it’s only by not pausing to think that Keith gets himself out of there before he’s found out.

* 

Shiro walks out of the meeting with Admiral Sanda like he imagines a survivor walks away from a nasty crash with only a few bruises to show for it.

_There should be more damage_, he thinks. It doesn’t feel real.

He can’t believe he’s still the pilot for the Kerberos mission. He can’t believe that Sam managed to go toe to toe with Admiral Sanda and hold his ground. He can’t _believe_ Iverson would go over their heads to try to get him pulled from the crew… and just like that, he tips from disbelieving relief back into simmering, uneasy anger. 

He’s _so close_. The edge of the solar system is within his grasp, and if anything else tries to take that away from him, he’ll—he’ll _what?_ He doesn’t know what he’ll do, and that’s not a comfortable thought. He just needs to get through the next five days without something else going wrong. He just… he needs to get himself calmed down again. He needs to focus on what’s next, not on what just happened. The day isn’t over yet and he still has so much to do. God, there’s _so much to do_—

Shiro suddenly feels overwhelmed, feels so _weak_, feels pulled in too many directions by too many responsibilities and desperately underprepared for all of them.

He just… he needs to feel like he can do this, no matter what Iverson and Sanda say. He needs someone to tell him it’s going to be okay.

*

Shiro’s so relieved when he finds Adam having a coffee break in one of the instructor lounges that for a second he thinks he might throw the last shreds of his professionalism out the window and just demand to be held. The urge passes as quickly as it surfaced, though, and Shiro carefully folds the feeling away.

Adam turns in his seat at the counter to see who it is, his face softening when he sees Shiro, and that’s—it’s enough to help ease the way Shiro feels like he’s sloshing over the edges of himself.

“Hey,” Adam says, his tone melting into concern at whatever Shiro’s expression is doing. Distantly, Shiro supposes he must look like a storm cloud about to burst.

“Hey,” Shiro replies, and he wishes he sounded less like a kid coming home after a long, bad day. He’s suddenly very, very tired. He doesn’t even want to be standing anymore, so he flops his bag over the edge of the nearest couch and then drops himself down next to it.

“Everything okay?” Adam asks, and—

Something about his tone makes Shiro think that maybe all the talk has already reached Adam’s ears, that maybe Adam already knows what Shiro’s about to say. A flicker of something like a premonition rises up in the back of his mind, and Shiro dully hopes that he doesn’t know where this conversation is going.

“Iverson thinks I shouldn’t go on the mission,” he says, delivers the news almost flatly. “Called in the big guns. Admiral Sanda showed up and tried to get Sam to remove me from the crew.”

“Well, maybe he’s right,” Adam says, turning back to his coffee. “Maybe you shouldn't be going on the mission. You’ll only be putting yourself at risk.”

And there it is.

Shiro doesn’t want to do this right now. Not today. There’s something awful about the inevitability of it, something exhausted and exhausting about the way this is going to be a rehash of old territory. Shiro knows this, but it doesn’t stop the same irritation from bubbling up and out of him.

“You _know_ how important this is to me,” Shiro says, and he can’t believe he has to keep saying it. “It’s worth the risk—”

Adam’s coffee cup clatters down onto his saucer, the noise abrupt and unexpected.

“_Takashi_,” he says, tight and tired in a way that Shiro hasn’t heard before. “How important am _I_ to you?”

Shiro blinks, taken sharply aback. This is… new. Unpleasantly new. He stares at Adam’s back, tensed and rigid where he’s curled over his coffee, and suddenly Shiro can’t see the shape of the conversation anymore, doesn’t know where they are.

“Every mission, every drill,” Adam says, “I’ve been right there with you. But this is more than a mission. This is your _life_ at stake.”

There’s another volcanic crack in Shiro’s chest at the words, an even hotter wave of anger, pure and reactive. 

“Don’t start that again, Adam!” he snaps, sick of being coddled. “You don’t need to protect me! This is something that I need to do for myself!” 

“I don’t understand this!” Adam almost yells, something desperate and brittle in his tone. “I just don’t—what’s _left_, Takashi? There’s nothing left for you to prove! You've broken every record there is to break!”

Shiro can hardly look at the exasperation, the hurt, the incomprehension in Adam’s face. He’s brimming too full with the sting of it, of having this final confirmation that he’s _incomprehensible_ to the man he’s shared himself with.

Really, truly—

Unknowable. 

Something is hardening in his chest, shrinking and sinking. Whatever he’d held back, whatever he hadn’t said, Shiro had thought that at least he could be with someone, that he could be seen. That even with the gaps carved out of him by this _fucking_ disease, Adam would see and want and maybe love the man left over. 

Shiro had thought that there might be enough of himself left over.

Not enough, apparently. Not enough to get to be just… someone’s son, or a pilot. Someone’s lover or partner. Not enough left over to get to have something like a normal life before—

“I know I can’t stop you, but I _won’t _go through this again,” Adam says, and he sounds defeated and sore and _done_. “So if you decide to go? Don’t expect me to be here when you get back.”

—before the end. 

Adam slings his bag over his shoulder and then stands, pausing for a moment as if Shiro could have something else to say, any kind of response to that.

“…I’ve got a class to teach,” he says, and then he’s gone.

The pain doesn’t hit Shiro until he finally looks up and sees Adam’s coffee cup left on the counter, only half finished and already cold.

*

Keith shoves his way onto the roof, the steel door slamming open and then closed again behind him with a clatter that he barely hears. 

He hasn’t stopped moving for more than an hour—two hours? More? He doesn’t know—trying to outrace his clamouring thoughts, get ahead of the fear that’s threatening to come up the back of his throat. He starts pacing in circles on the sun-warmed pitch, can’t stop himself.

_This man is sick._

What does that mean? What does that even fucking _mean_?

Shiro can’t be that sick, it doesn’t make any _sense_. If he were, there would be signs of things getting worse, right? There would be more symptoms and, and—

The way Shiro has been unconsciously rubbing at his arms these days after long training flights and sim sessions. The pained little line that has been appearing more and more often between Shiro’s brows when he flexes his hands. How lately, when he thinks back on it, Keith has seen Shiro’s hands shaking, just a little, before they’re tucked away under desks and tables, out of sight. The tight-lipped, carefully blanked expression on Shiro’s face whenever Adam mutters something like_ you know you shouldn’t push yourself like this. _All the left-handed training and all the pressure Shiro has been putting on himself to get those scores up as high as his right-handed ones—

_Just some electro-stimulators to keep my muscles loose_.

Keith had_ known_ that Shiro had only given him half truths that day, and he’d wanted _so badly_ to push it, to get more answers—but he hadn’t. Shiro clearly hadn’t wanted to talk about it, so Keith just hadn’t asked again, but… what if, all along, Shiro had been trying to hide something really serious? What if Shiro had been trying to spare him from knowing about this? Trying to protect him?

Keith stops cold.

“_Fuck_ that,” he whispers, feels his face go hot. “_Fuck you_, Shiro. Don’t you _dare_—"

He whirls on his heel, slams open the door again, and bolts down the stairs. 

*

Shiro can’t think straight right now, not past the whole-self _sting_ of Adam’s parting words. That ultimatum still rings furiously in his mind, and the only way he can drown it out is to keep moving, keep _doing_.

He’s up to his elbows in a fleet hoverbike almost before he realizes it, oil staining the sleeves of his uniform jacket. He shoves them up to his elbows, keeps working anyway. His hands are shaking a little, prickling and clumsy with nerve pain, but he _forces_ them to finish the motions, makes them obey him until the noise in his mind starts to lessen, just a bit, become a little less unbearable. He keeps going until he’s sweating with it, does as many adjustments and repairs that aren’t needed as ones that are, just so his thoughts have enough room to stop spinning—

“When were you gonna tell me?”

Shiro turns at the anger in that voice, sees Keith’s scowl-darkened face looking up at him, hands stuffed into his pockets and shoulders tight. 

“Oh,” Shiro says weakly, startled, trying to reorient himself. “Hey, Keith.”

“So what is it?” Keith demands, tone biting. “Are you sick or something?”

It’s like getting hit by a wind shear. Shiro feels whiplashed, doesn’t know how to get a grip on himself, on this conversation. Where is _this_ coming from? Whatever steadiness he’d regained in the last hour yaws out from under him with a lurch.

“I’m… not sure I follow you,” he says, a ripple of helpless dread going through him. _No more of this_, he thinks. _Not today_—

“I was outside your office,” Keith says, the words twisting with misery and heavy with accusation. “I overheard you and commander Holt talking with Admiral Sanda. Tell me the truth. Tell me what’s _wrong_. I’m not a little kid, I can handle it!”

And Shiro looks down into Keith’s eyes, full of hurt and concern and the edge of desperation, and he can’t… _lie_ to him anymore. He has no more resolve left, no silver tongue to fall back on, no fuel left to burn. The truth gets stuck in his throat—for a second he seriously thinks he might choke on the words—but then he lets out a long breath, and lets go.

“I… have a disease,” he confesses, “and it’s getting worse. I’ll only be able to maintain my peak condition for a couple more years. After that…” Shiro can’t finish that sentence. He has to turn away, has to lean against the bike. “The Garrison doesn’t want me up there, and… neither does Adam.”

God, Shiro almost says it out loud.

_Adam doesn’t want me._

“So… what are you gonna do?” Keith says, and he sounds shaken, all the fight gone out of his voice.

Shiro’s hands bunch into fists on the warm metal of his hoverbike.

“I’m going on the mission,” he says fiercely, half to himself—_vows_ it—and saying it out loud does something to that dark, snarled-up thing that lives in his chest. The words make it pause, make it uncurl, make it placid and silent in a way he can’t remember feeling, maybe _ever_, and he feels—

Calmed.

Not okay, not by a mile, but… calmed. 

This has been a bad day. A _really_ bad day, and Shiro knows he’s not okay, but… it’s not important. The regret and anger about Adam _bites_ at him, but those teeth at his heels won’t be able to turn him aside from Kerberos, from getting back up into the black of interplanetary space, and _that’s_ what matters right now.

Faster, higher, _farther_—

“Okay,” Keith says, a little unsteady, like he’s talking himself through something. “Okay. I won’t try to tell you what to do, and… I can’t make you tell me everything. And you don’t have to. You _don’t_. I shouldn’t have demanded that. You don’t owe me an explanation—”

Shiro feels a cold pang of guilt.

“Keith—”

“_Shut up_,” he says hotly, fists clenched at his sides. “Don’t explain. You had your reasons. Right? The only thing that matters is that you get your chance to go out to the Kuiper belt. So, you go on the mission. You go to Kerberos and you watch yourself and you come _back_. Alright?”

“Keith, I’m going to be fine.”

“_You fucking better be!_”

Keith has to drag a sleeve across his eyes, and Shiro feels like the worst kind of asshole. Keith’s face is still pressed into his own elbow and his voice is still watery when he says, “It doesn’t matter if you’re—_sick_. I’m coming up after you, so you’d better be ready. Okay, old timer?” 

“I’m counting on it,” Shiro says, and maybe Keith can hear that he means it—seriously means it—because he looks up at him, red-rimmed eyes and all. Shiro barely has time for the mixed wave of affection and remorse to finish hitting him before Keith’s weight is hitting him too, and suddenly Keith’s arms are tight around his waist, hugging him fiercely. And Shiro’s arms are aching and his hands are stained with oil, but he hugs back anyways, just as tightly.

“If you get yourself hurt out there,” Keith says directly into Shiro’s jacket, his voice twisted up in the fabric, “_I’ll kill you_. Got that?” 

Shiro gives a choked off laugh. Something dark and slightly hysterical cracks loose inside him.

“It’ll take more than you or the cold outer reaches of the solar system to finish me off,” he says, and he knows it’s not funny because of the way Keith’s grip twitches against the small of his back. “Look, I’m going to be careful,” he tries again. “Of course I’m going to be careful. We’re taking every precaution. I’m going to keep my crew safe. Nothing’s going to stop me from getting us all back in one piece.”

“…you promise?”

“I promise.”

Shiro wonders if Keith ever got a chance to say anything like this to his dad before he died. Maybe not, or maybe he’d told him every day. Shiro wants to ask about it, wants to know. Maybe a younger Keith had said _be careful_ to his dad every day as he’d gone out the door. Maybe Keith had only ever hoped it to himself, silently. 

He wonders, suddenly, if he’s putting Keith through something for a second time that he already experienced once, wonders how much of the desperate strength of Keith’s arms around him right now comes from something older, from before they ever met. 

Now’s not the time to ask, though. Maybe one day, after Shiro’s back on Earth, he’ll find the right moment for that question, for that apology. He’ll make it up to him somehow. 

For now, there’s no more time.

Kerberos is a go in five days.

*

Launches are loud.

So loud that Keith always feels like he’s been grabbed by the lungs and shaken, even for days afterward.

The footage of the _Tyche_ shuttle riding upward on a tower of cloud and fire is splashed across every screen, every data pad and PD, and every time Keith sees it his body remembers the pressure, the _noise_.

He remembers it as part of saying goodbye to Shiro, the last piece of Shiro’s presence on Earth for more than a year. The man left the world on the flames of hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen burning up, and he’ll come back into it amidst the flames of the shuttle punching down into the atmosphere at nearly Mach twenty-five.

A fanfare of heat and friction, both ways.

It isn’t until two days after the launch that Keith finds something more tangible by which to remember Shiro’s goodbye, and he almost laughs as he pulls it out of his laundry hamper. 

A uniform jacket, stained. 

Shiro had been grimy almost up to his elbows from working on the hoverbike that day, and he’d hugged Keith anyways. From the marks alone it’s hard to tell that they were made by a human hand, but Keith knows, and that dirty smear is suddenly precious.

Proof of contact.

He stares at it for a long time, and then he folds it carefully and puts it aside.

He washes everything else, and tries to make himself ready for a long year alone.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms and Saints by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> Finally getting to bring in Lance and Hunk? Total blast. Mentally inhabiting the break down of Shiro and Adam’s relationship long enough to write it? Not so much. Hugs for all these boys and all the hard times ahead. 
> 
> Also, in case it wasn't clear, select dialogue is directly from the show. I tried to keep it as accurate as possible, but I've definitely added bits and bobs to flesh out each scene and to weave my own ideas in more thoroughly. 
> 
> And yeah. Rocket launches are stupendously, unbelievably, mind-buggeringly loud. I hope to have the honour of being deafened by one in person some day.


	7. Dislocation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! We all knew this was coming. This is definitely where the story starts to earn its 'trials and tribulations' tag. Come along for this rough ride, friends...
> 
> Effusive thanks for Sarah, my beta, for her unending encouragement. HUGS <3
> 
> Heads up that this fic will definitely have more than 10 chapters, and I'll clock that count up as we go. Also, I'm inching up to the end of what I've got more fully written ahead of time, so in future I may have to bump this thing up to an update every three weeks. I'll do my very best to keep up both the pace and the quality, but life is a Thing, y'know?

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**7: Dislocation**

_But still you stumble, feet give way  
Outside the world seems a violent place  
  
_

*

There’s no one to talk to.

Keith is acutely aware that the communication delay from the Earth to Pluto is more than five hours, that just a single question and its reply take half a day to cross the solar system, even at the speed of light. This isn’t a loop to Mars and back, a month round trip with a crew who’s never more than twenty minutes out of touch. This is fucking _Pluto_.

Keith had known perfectly well that this time he couldn’t expect anything. No messages, no videos, just the mission update reports that everyone gets from Flight Command and the news. Kerberos is way too distant—resources like time, equipment, power, and signal bandwidth too lean and too tightly rationed—for the crew to be able to be wasteful with non-mission-relevant data transmissions.

It hadn’t stopped the day of his eighteenth birthday from feeling hollow without some sign from Shiro. It hadn’t stopped Keith from ruminating on the fact that Kerberos is the farthest that human beings have ever travelled from Earth. That’s thirty-nine and a half AU, four times farther than Saturn.

No one, in human history, has ever been as far apart as he is from Shiro right now. That fact is like a splinter between his ribs these days.

Keith has wondered if this thought ever crosses Adam’s mind, if it ever stops him in the hallways like it does to Keith. But Adam hasn’t spoken to Keith, not since before the launch. He supposes that Adam must be busy with teaching his classes. In less charitable moments—and he’s been feeling less charitable more and more often these days—Keith suspects that Adam is actively avoiding him, along with any other reminder of Shiro. 

_Fine by me_, Keith thinks, but then…

There really is no one to talk to.

He had thought that five months was a long time without Shiro around. That was nothing, he’s realizing, it was a drop in the pond compared to this. It’s been more than eight months since the Kerberos mission launched—only two thirds of this purgatory has passed—and Keith feels like he’s going _crazy_.

He misses Shiro—acutely, _wildly_—but more than that he actually misses feeling unseen, misses feeling invisible. Before, he could just withdraw into himself and push through everything, but now? It’s his graduating year as a cadet, and things are different.

He’s too senior in his classes to be treated neutrally by his instructors anymore, and the extra attention and the raised expectations settle on him like an uncomfortable and cloying layer of dust. The feedback gets more in-depth, the assessments more personal, the stakes of failing higher and higher. He and his fellow cadets are expected to be training and studying in tighter groups, too, and keeping himself to himself just doesn’t _work_ anymore. More than he ever has, he’s being graded on how well he can fit into a chain of command, into a functioning team, and he just… doesn’t.

It didn’t used to matter, the way he would grind against the people around him. He could just extract himself to spare everyone the discomfort or just wait for it to be over, and it didn’t make much of a difference to his grades. These days, there’s nowhere to retreat, no way out of it, and he has to be the cog that doesn’t fit, the link that misses the connection, the only one who can’t fulfill his role. The only one, James Griffin keeps reminding him, who _can’t seem to do his damn job_.

For the first time, he’s actually been failing exercises and assignments. Disagreements and misunderstandings seem to flare up in every room he walks into. According to peer review, his tone of voice is ‘disrespectful’ and ‘hostile’, his decisions during group mission sims are ‘reckless’ and ‘impulsive’, and his tactics are ‘aggressive’ and ‘myopic’ and, on one memorable occasion, ‘loco’. 

Before, the way the other cadets disliked him had been vague, based on false impressions, surface altercations, and a lot of distorted hearsay. Now, their dislike is specific, detailed and thorough and sometimes even given for marks, and Keith can’t get any distance from their distrust and judgement. 

He feels surrounded. Suffocated, but apart.

Severed.

He spends more and more of his spare time in the desert, going out on his own on one of the Garrison hoverbikes, chasing something he can’t name.

He keeps racing himself to the horizon and losing.

* 

They put him back on probation—academic this time, instead of disciplinary—and it’s like getting slapped in the face.

Keith doesn’t know how this all went so wrong so fast, how he could have possibly fucked up so badly. It doesn’t feel real.

Commander Iverson is the one who tells him, the one who sits him down in his office for a one-on-one meeting about _deciding what future you want at the Garrison_. Iverson pulls up the conditions of the probation on a data pad, makes Keith read the whole thing and sign it with a fingerprint. The terms are clear enough, but… Keith doesn’t know how to tell him that he doesn’t understand how he got himself here, so he doesn’t know how he’s going to get back out of this.

There’s nothing he can say. He has no answers, and he leaves that office without saying another word. 

And there’s a real fear that’s creeping over him. That he’s not going to be able to fix this. That he’s not going to meet the terms of his probation, no matter how hard he tries. That he’s already lost control, already in the tailspin. That he’s finally—_finally_—let Shiro down, the way some part of him always fucking knew he would.

For one insane, upside-down moment, Keith’s actually _glad_ that Shiro’s not around to see this, and that thought burns up his throat like bile, makes him feel ill, right from his heart down to his gut. The wrenching reversal of it, the wrongness of it, leaves him trying and failing to pull in breath, leaves him ashamed and lost.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, just keeps his eyes on the floor and keeps walking, keeps walking, keeps walking— 

Keith twists his way around corner after corner, down hallways and up and down stairs. He turns away from the sound of human voices and towards some safe place, _any_ safe place, desperate not to be witnessed and desperate to find somewhere to spill everything roiling up inside of him.

He realizes he’s come to a stop in front of Sergeant Estrella’s office door.

Keith stares at it, at her name plate—_Deportment Officer Sgt. Reyna Estrella (BSW, MC, LMHC, LMLP)_—and then stares down at his fists, clenched by his side. He raises one of them to, to… what? To knock? To spew his failures all over someone he’s only met once? To make his mistakes her problem?  
  


His hand is still paused above the door, wavering, when he hears someone walking up behind him. He turns, caught—

It’s Sergeant Estrella, her face awash with surprise.

“Cadet? Did you need something?”

“No,” he lies, “I don’t. I don’t need anything.”

He only belatedly realizes that he needs to salute, and he does so awkwardly, heart pounding. He hates the way she takes him in as she returns the salute, analyses him in a brief sweep of her eyes over his face. It makes him feel like he doesn’t have any skin left, no way to hide.

“I have a free moment now,” she offers, “are you sure you don’t want to—”

“_No_,” he says. “I should—go. I’m going to go. Ma’am.”

“…Alright,” she says. “You’re dismissed if you want to be. Contact me if you change your mind.” 

He’s moving—escaping—almost before she stops speaking. 

*

Shiro comes back into consciousness in flashes and jolts, panicked and sick. His head is throbbing with blinding pain. This place—_where is this, where is he_—it’s dark, but there are dim green and purple points of light around him and every one of them feels like it’s stabbing through his skull. He can barely keep his eyes open, can barely tell which way is up. His limbs are weak, he can’t _move_, he can’t—

He’s being pulled, he realizes. The lights are in a pattern, in lines moving past him. A corridor? He can feel the slide of some kind of floor beneath him, can feel his IEVA suit pulling up under his arms from where—_oh god oh god_—one of the creatures is dragging him by his bound hands.

_One of the creatures_.

Shiro’s world lurches and spins when he twists to try to look up at it—_mild concussion_, some distant part of him notes, _disorientation and nausea and acute fear_—

He can’t see the thing pulling him, but he sees—_doors_, he realizes, blank slabs of metal with narrow slits in them and—_eyes_. There are eyes watching him from behind those doors, and they’re all the wrong colour or shape, some of them even the wrong _number_. There are voices behind the doors, too. Some of them are murmuring, snatches of speech in tones and languages that Shiro can’t comprehend, but there are words, phrases he realizes he can understand.

“—_brought in another one_—”

“—_what are they? I’ve never seen any like that_—”

His heart starts to pound—_adrenalin response_—and he casts around desperately for something familiar, for some sign of his crew, and—_there_, that’s Garrison grey and orange, some distance back along the corridor. It’s someone in another IEVA suit like his own, stained almost to unrecognizability by the alien light. Shiro feels sick and light-headed, but he forces himself to focus as he’s jostled and it’s… Matt? No, that’s Sam, he realizes, awake and upright and being marched with his arms forced behind him.

Dread and relief hit him at the same time, so hard that he might actually whimper out loud. He’s jolted again, pulled around a corner so hard and so carelessly that his shoulders flare with pain, and suddenly there’s more light—

Shiro flinches away, but it’s—a bank of windows. It takes Shiro a moment to realizes what it is that he’s seeing beyond them.

Cells.

Row upon row upon row of cells, stacked up and up, disappearing higher than he can see. Hundreds of them.

_Internment camp_.

The words come into his mind like a sliver, and suddenly he remembers the grainy black and white photos that his great uncle had laid out, once—actual photos, on paper, curled and yellowing with age—of the place where his great uncle’s grandmother had grown up. Barbed wire fences and watchtowers all along the edges. Armed guards who were ready to shoot to kill. Rows of tiny shack houses, all pressed together. And in the middle were the families, all their faces like Shiro’s own, all their names like Shiro’s own. 

O_nset of panic—_

That’s when Shiro feels himself fall over the edge of fear into something worse.

*

_Something’s not right_, Keith thinks.

There should have been another mission update report by now. There should be some news. He knows the slew of experiments that the Kerberos crew has to run through—Shiro read the procedures out loud so many times while studying them that Keith knows half of them by heart—and there should be some kind of information on what they’ve been doing.

For the last two weeks, there’s been steady a stream of little status updates—_ice core drilling to 10 metres successful, drilling equipment functioning optimally, samples collected from third of five primary locations, samples secured and chemo-spectral analysis begun, data package prepped for transmission back to Earth, fourth primary location scouted, assessed positively, crew to begin drilling next day cycle_—and then they just… stopped.

There’s no other message on the Garrison’s intranet sites. No explanation. Nothing that says _data disrupted_, or _signal lost_, or any other clue. There’s just… nothing new. Public sites don’t show anything different. Just a lack of new information, the gap yawning from one day into two days into three.

Keith barely notices that he’s already missed a day of classes to research about signal transmission to and from the Kuiper belt before he decides that he’s going to miss the next day too. He misses two more days before he receives a private vidmessage from Sergeant Estrella.

_I’ve taken the initiative and the liberty to authorize some time off for you from your courses and training_, she says. _I’m concerned about your state at the moment and have been since you came to my office last week_. 

The message also contains an order to report to her office again.

*

There’s no preamble. Keith doesn’t even let Sergeant Estrella get out more than a ‘hello’. He starts speaking even before he’s finished sitting down.

“Something’s not right,” he tells her. “Where’s the latest information about the Kerberos crew? There’s no mission update reports, and there’s nothing that says why they’ve stopped. Something’s not _right_.” 

“Keith,” she says, and the way she’s dropped the ‘cadet’ only makes him more uneasy. “I brought you here to talk about what’s going on with your marks and your training.” 

“I… don’t want to talk about that,” he says, derailed.

“We _have_ to talk about it,” she insists. “This is serious. You’re not going to classes. You missed your latest group sim assessment. You even failed to report to your live-flight instructor for your scheduled tactics session, something I know you’ve been working towards. And on top of all that, you keep getting written up for small infractions—_basic_ infractions—like pushing curfew, or not keeping your uniform clean.”

Her eyes go down and left, and he knows that she’s looking at the shoulder of his uniform where there’s a conspicuous smudge darkening what should be the Garrison’s livid shade of orange.

“You’re on probation, Keith. I _know_ you know better, and it’s pretty obvious that you’re not okay right now. So what’s going on?”

Keith doesn’t say anything. Somewhere in the last few days, his academic woes have become background noise. Whatever’s going on with _him_ is irrelevant. He’s even a little annoyed that she’s bringing it up, confused that she thinks it matters.

And the dirty uniform? There’s a reason for that.

_Nothing’s going to stop me from getting us all back in one piece._

He’d _promised_, but—

“You’re worried about Lieutenant Shirogane,” Sergeant Estrella says, states it as a fact.

It doesn’t matter that she says it with practiced neutrality. She knows too much about the inside of Keith’s head when it comes to Shiro, and he wonders for a half second if she can read his damn mind. He feels his face get hot, feels any response get lodged in his throat. But he remembers her kindness, her understanding during that horrible interview. He makes himself nod.

She seems to weigh what to say next very carefully, her fingers tapping at her desk in a way he hasn’t seen before.

“Did you know that Lieutenant Shirogane has you listed as his primary emergency contact?” she says, finally.

He didn’t. It makes something twist in his chest.

_Why is she talking about emergency contacts?_

“I know you two are very close, and that you’ve supported each other a lot over your time here at the Garrison. He always spoke very highly of you.” She smiles a little, then, and Keith feels comforted despite himself. “What I’m saying is, you have a right to some information about your friend. And it’s natural for you to worry if that information isn’t available. This hasn’t been officially disclosed, but there’s been some issues with the communication between Flight Command and the Kerberos crew over the last few days.”

Keith’s heart rate lurches, and he opens his mouth to demand more details, but she holds up a hand in a _not so fast_ gesture.

“There’s no particular reason to be worried,” she continues. “I spoke to one of the communication techs myself and they told me that they expected there might be some periods of interference like this. It’s a hiccup, but it’s not one that wasn’t anticipated. I got special permission to inform you about this, but I have to ask you not to share it around. Whenever there’s more information that I’m authorized to share, I’ll share it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Keith says. She’d used the word ‘ask’, but he knows it’s an order.

“Now. In the meantime, let’s talk about what’s going on with your course work and what you’re going to do about it—”

The rest of the conversation washes over him, and he answers her questions as though from a distance, through a layer of fog. He can’t stop thinking about _emergency contact_, _communication issues_, _authorized information_.

He feels more questions bubbling up in him, not fewer, and though he can hold on to what she said as a kind of reassurance—it’s just a hiccup—something deep in his gut is still telling him _something’s not right, something’s not right, something is really wrong_.

*

They call themselves the Galra.

Shiro’s learned that much and precious little else.

_Bring them to the main fleet for interrogation_, the creature on the screen had said, _the druids will find out what they know_. And the others—the ones who had dragged them in—had bowed, given some kind of salute.

Shiro doesn’t know what that means, what _any_ of it means. His mind still snags on the words _druid_ and _interrogation_, snags and pulls like a hangnail. A thousand unanswered questions, a thousand unconfirmed fears, and not knowing isn’t even the worst part.

The worst part is that there’s no one to talk to.

He’s alone.

Alone in a cell made entirely of some kind of metal, barely six by six feet wide and ten feet high that makes him feel like he’s been dropped down a hole. It’s austere and cold and lit in a perpetual purple-green twilight. Featureless except for the too-high slit in the door where the guards pause to snarl at him, throw him too little to eat, or both. Nowhere to sit, nothing soft to rest on, just the hard, thrumming floor and what he can only think of as a bucket.

Shiro’s head has finally cleared and the nausea has died down, but that’s no comfort. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. He doesn’t know how long he’d spent concussed, or how many times he’d thrown up in the corner before they’d bodily hauled him somewhere else, stripped him out of his IEVA suit, and hosed him down with freezing water. He’d tried to protest when they pried off his cuff, tried to tell them he needed it, but they’d threatened to break his arm and he’d been too sick and weak to fight back. Then they’d shoved him back into a cell, naked, shuddering, and clutching the rudimentary garment he’s wearing now.

Shiro isn’t even sure if this is the same cell, and there’s no one to ask.

He can’t see anything out of the slit except for other cell doors. Sometimes the slits are open and he can see those other eyes, can share fleeting glances with the other creatures locked up here with him, but those eyes are all so… _alien_—_literally alien_—and it’s a jolt of disorientation each and every time that he can’t read the emotions in them, can’t trust what he thinks he sees in their expressions.

What he thinks he sees is mostly fear, but he can’t be certain of anything here.

He’d tried to talk to those other creatures—_prisoners_, he thinks; he knows he heard some of them speak, knows they’re not animals—but whatever ship they’re on is now underway and the noise of whatever engines it uses has increased from an ambient hum to a constant din. It’s too loud for him to shout over it without attracting the unpleasant attention of the guards.

He knows better than to shout, now, and he has the bruises to prove it.

So he sits—curling and uncurling his numbed and prickling hands—or he paces, or he sleeps fitfully curled on the floor, alone and hungry and silenced. 

In the midst of the relentless fear—that sickening, incessant loop of_ where are they taking us, what do they want with us, where did they come from, where’s Matt, where’s Sam, what’s going to happen to us, god god god what could they possibly want from us, what the _fuck_ do they want_—there’s the one thing that Shiro never imagined would ache the most.

He wants to hear a human voice.

The last eight months have been stitched together by a never-ending thread of check ins and radio chatter, confirmations and the rhythmic back and forth of procedure, discussions, and debates—even idle jibes and bad puns, meandering stories and say-it-as-you-think-it nonsense—and to suddenly be without that feels like he’s been cut away from something vital, like something’s been cut out of him. 

He _needs_ to hear a human voice. He feels like he’ll go fucking crazy if he doesn’t. 

*

Keith starts going to his classes again after Sergeant Estrella reminds him that flunking out would be the absolute last thing Shiro would want for him.

A few of his fellow cadets actually welcome him back. Especially the big guy who’s always wearing a headband and who’s always hanging out with that loudmouth, the cargo pilot what’s-his-name. He gives Keith a big grin and a big thumbs up.

“Hey, man! Good to see you back in action.”

Keith doesn’t know what to do with that. He supposes he appreciates it. He tries to return the smile, but he has no idea what kind of expression he makes.

It’s so hard to stay focused on anything other than news from Kerberos. Even as he tries to catch up on all the work he’s missed, he keeps more than half an eye on the news, checking his alerts almost compulsively. He watches the Garrison staff like a hawk for any sign of what’s going on at the edge of the solar system.

And at first Keith thinks that maybe he’s just paranoid, but there _are_ signs.

He thinks he sees officers rushing in and out of Mission Planning and the Flight Ops facilities more often and more urgently than he’s ever seen before. Speculation about the info blackout starts circulating too, so Keith knows he’s not the only one who noticed the conspicuous lack of updates.

He tries to refocus on his studies, he really does, but…

Keith feels like he’s drifting, like the Garrison isn’t _real_. Everything around him feels foreign, somehow, unfamiliar. He feels suddenly like he doesn’t know these buildings, these hallways, these rooms.

He wonders when he became a stranger to the place he’s lived for the last few years.

*

Shiro has always taken his size—his considerable height and breadth—for granted.

As a child he’d grown early and dramatically, big for his age in every grade. It didn’t take him much past sixteen to outgrow most adults around him, and being the biggest thing in the room became normal. Having to look _up_ at anyone has been as rare as it is mildly disorienting.

But the Galra are _big_.

Big in a way that his mind can’t get used to and all his physical training couldn’t have prepared him for. There’s a jolt of wrongness each and every time he’s reminded that most Galra _dwarf_ him, outweigh him, tower over him.

When the door to his cell finally slides open, it takes laughably little effort for the guard to fit one huge clawed hand around his arm and shove him into the corridor. He tries to fight back, but he’s still weakened by hunger and days of inactivity, and it’s a matter of seconds before he’s subdued.

They have to aim _downward_ to strike him, and that’s so unexpected that it takes him a moment to even realize what happened.

They bind his hands while he’s still reeling, lift him to his feet, and push him into line with all the other prisoners, all with hands shackled. Then there’s the order to get moving, and the guard’s booming voice is punctuated by the electric crackling of a weapon that looks enough like a cattle prod that Shiro doesn’t want to be anywhere near it. 

They’re disembarked into what seems to be some kind of hanger, and somehow Shiro knows that this place is bigger—much, _much_ bigger—than the last. Maybe it’s something different about the recirculated air or the vibrations that come up through his feet, but Shiro instantly _knows_.

_Bring them to the main fleet_.

Shiro tries to get a handle on his panic, but he feels so fucking _small_.

Robotic sentries march them through a maze of metal corridors. Shiro keeps track of lefts and rights as long as he can before it all tangles in his memory, and after that he just takes in as much as he can. Some detail might help, some observation now might pay off later, might help him find Matt and Sam and get them the hell out of here.

_I’m going to get out of here_.

The thought is desperate, necessary. Shiro refuses to contemplate how likely it is to be a comforting delusion.

_I’m going to get us all out of here somehow, I’m going to find a way to escape—_

A different guard points a clawed hand at his chest.

“_You_,” it growls, and that brittle loop of wishful thinking shatters. “Prisoner 117-9875. Come.”

He’s pulled away from the other prisoners—Shiro feels their eyes follow his extraction, either pitying his fate or relieved that he’s the chosen target—and he’s shoved none too gently down another series of corridors.

“Where are you taking me?” he says, too shaken to keep quiet.

The guard brings the butt of his weapon down across the side of Shiro’s face in response, hard enough to give an audible crack that Shiro feels through his whole skull. The side of his head explodes with pain and he can feel his cheek and jaw enflamed and bruising even as he’s pushed onward.

He sucks in breath and concentrates on keeping his footing until a door finally slides open in front of him. He barely has time to take in the strange equipment, the eerily glowing tanks, the oddly-shaped table, the thick straps along it, the pointed tools—

_Interrogation_.

Shiro doesn’t have time to shout or try to push away before suddenly—too suddenly—a mask appears in front of him like it blinked into existence there. Too many yellow eyes, dark robes, thin clawed hands. That’s all Shiro can perceive before the voice slithers out from behind that false, flattened face.

“_Let us begin extraction_,” it hisses, and something primal in Shiro’s mind recoils.

The _thing_ leans in closer, and—

That’s when his thoughts get jagged and scattered.

He only knows the feeling of being held down, then horrible light and pain like lightning. Above all, he knows the scouring, unbearable sense of violation—like something is turning every inch of him inside out and then _reading him_—

_Druid_.

He remembers the word, but for a time he can’t measure, he doesn’t remember why.

*

And then—

“Cadet, please come with me. Commander Iverson needs to speak to you.”

“…Why? Does it have to be right now? I was in the middle of sim prep—"

“It’s urgent. We need you to come right now for an emergency briefing.”

—Keith’s last tether breaks.

They tell him that the Kerberos mission has failed.

They tell him that there’s no chance that the crew survived.

That Shiro is—

Shiro is _gone_.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms and Saints by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> Pluto really is about four times farther out from the sun than Saturn. If Saturn is the back porch, then Pluto is the far-flung, half-tipped-over garden fence of our sun's property before the wide open rural fields of interstellar space. 
> 
> Deportment Officer Sgt. Reyna Estrella's qualifications:  
BSW - Bachelor of Social Work  
MC - Master in Counselling  
LMHC - Licensed Mental Health Counselor  
LMLP - Licensed Military Legal Practitioner  
(Only this last one is made up; the rest are legit real world letters)
> 
> For my Japanese and Japanese-Canadian friends, internment is absolutely still salient. Read up on it, if you haven't already. The Canadian and US governments subjected their Japanese citizens to appalling treatment in the 1940s, and the stripping of rights and property is still being felt today and will be felt into the future. In my mind, Shiro’s dad is Japanese-American, so little Takashi would have learned about this growing up.


	8. Verge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the trials and tribulations continue! This is where the Descriptions of Captivity and Grief tags really start to apply. There's a lot more that these boys have to get through...
> 
> Sorry for the delay. I mentioned this in the comments for last chapter, but I have to switch to posting every 3 or 4 weeks (still on the weekend) in order to give myself enough time to write and edit the upcoming chapters. I hope you'll stick with me while the pace slows down a bit. Bless you all for reading and commenting and kudos-ing! You're the best!!!
> 
> GIANT HUGS for my beta Sarah, who gave me more than 30 comments on this section that were just about how much she liked my turns of phrase :')

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**8: Verge**

_I know it seems like forever  
I know it seems like an age  
But one day this will be over  
I swear it's not so far away_

*

There’s a ceremony.

There are no bodies from 7.5 billion kilometers away, but there’s a god damned ceremony. 

It feels almost absurd, like a nightmare.

As it’s happening, Keith knows that he’s not going to remember most of it. He’s not… present, not really. He feels utterly outside himself, pulled along and drifting. The only conscious choice he makes is to stay on the edges of it as much as possible. Some of the other people there try to talk to him—Sergeant Estrella for one, some of the other officers and cadets, even Adam tries—but he doesn’t have it in him to even acknowledge their existence.

He doesn’t say anything to anyone.

He doesn’t meet anyone’s eye.

When the gun salute starts going off, the noise of each shot feels like it’s ripping something off of him, like it’s tearing into his nerves.

The sound of sobbing is even worse.

As soon as he can, Keith leaves.

*

They throw Shiro and the rest of the prisoners in a cage together. There’s no other word for it.

Thirty other prisoners, all herded into a space that might be comfortable with half that number, hemmed in by a lattice of metal bars. Still brimming with the pain and wrongness from whatever the Druid did to him, Shiro is jostled on either side by beings so strangely proportioned that it takes him a moment to realize they’re all wearing the same drab, colourless garment as him, the same ragged purple shirt over top.

It takes him another moment to realize that one of them is familiar, one of them is—

“Matt!”

Shiro knows he should keep his voice down, but he _can’t_, not when that mop of blondish hair comes up and he sees his crewmate’s astonished face, not when his heart is tripping so hard in relief that he feels like he might choke.

“_Shiro?_”

Even in such desperate, disbelieving tones, the sound of his own name in another human’s voice is the best damn thing he’s ever heard.

They collide in the middle in a fierce hug, almost losing their balance. The side of Shiro’s face is still a painful mess and it _stings_ where Matt’s arm presses into it, but Shiro just doesn’t care.

“Are you alright? Matt, _talk_ to me. Are you okay? What did they—”

“They took dad,” he says, his voice cracking, “they took him away, I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what they did. And that thing in the mask—it, it got into my _head_—"

Shiro feels his own eyes sting as Matt dissolves into quiet, wracking sobs, shaking with released tension and misery. All he can do is hold on, offer the dubious comfort of words he doesn’t even know are true.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Shiro says, intones it like a mantra. “I’m going to get us out of here.” 

He feels his hands shake on Matt’s shoulders and hopes to fucking god he has the strength.

*

Keith remembers a time when the only thing he wanted in the world was to become an astropilot.

He remembers wishing for it over a crumbling muffin like it was a birthday cake—giving in to the fairy tale logic of a child—begging the universe with every fiber of his being to just _please, please just let me be allowed to fly, just let me up there, I want to be up there_—

Now the only thing he wants in the world is for the news reports to be wrong. 

He wants the words _pilot error_ to be a terrible mistake. He wants the headline _Kerberos Crew Lost_ to be unburned from the backs of his eyes. He wants the phrase _presumed dead_ to undo itself. He wants the _I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, Cadet_ to have never been uttered with such sympathy over Commander Iverson’s desk.

‘Bereavement leave’, they call it. They tell him he doesn’t have to go to his courses or do his training for a while. When he tries to go anyway—tries to do anything that could actually distract him from how his life has broken open—his instructors turn him away.

He wants people to stop putting their hands on his shoulder as if that will somehow make any of this better.

He wants to stop feeling like he’s falling apart, brittle and liquid at the same time. He feels his composure break—over and over again—and there’s no defense against it. He can only make himself care enough to keep his worst fractures hidden from any witnesses, but other than that, he has nothing left. No shame, no concern, not even enough energy to bother consciously with sleep or food. He exists in a muted world where everything is flat and desaturated and distant.

Somehow, it all filters in anyways. There’s no stopping it. The conversation ebbs and flows around him, warps and twists and tightens and condemns.

He wants the pitying eyes off his back and the whispered comments to die in the air and the screens to shut themselves off. He wants every newscaster who utters the words _Meridian Four_ to choke. He wants the hushed voices—saddened, and then speculative, and then certain, and then righteous—to stop following him wherever he goes. 

First it’s s_uch a tragedy_ and _so young and talented_ and _I just can’t believe it_. Then it’s _what went wrong?_ and _how did this even happen? _After that, it’s _did you hear about his health problems?_ and _they should never have let him fly_.

It takes two days for his mind to stop ringing, for the colour and sound to come back.

Then the _rage_ comes over him.

*

Without his cuff Shiro’s right arm has started to _burn_, seizing more and more every time the guards electrocute him to make him bow his head. Something wild and reckless and angry in him keeps pulling his eyes up, keeps him from submitting, but he doesn’t know if it’s any use.

They only sneer and shock him again, like he’s a feisty little dog that needs to be taught a lesson.

His right hand keeps locking up, knotting into a fist—sometimes for almost an hour—and even after it loosens, it stays numbed and weakened almost up to his shoulder. His left is only slightly better, the grip still strong enough despite the painful tingling and the trembling. Sometimes it’s so bad that Matt helps him eat, and it makes a low swell of dread rise up in him like a dark tide.

He feels so fucking helpless.

Stuck in this cage for days with no better idea of how to get out of this. It doesn’t help that the other prisoners keep mumbling fearfully about what the Galra have in store for them. 

_The arena_, one of them had moaned, _they’re going to throw us into the arena to be butchered_—

They’d been hissed at to shut up, but not before the words had rippled through the other prisoners like a cold wind, spreading fear like a contagion.

Matt had looked at him with real terror in his eyes, and Shiro could only try to banish it with his best approximation of a determined smile and a quiet _no matter what, we’ll get through it somehow_. The expression must have come out rather grim and the words aren’t much more than a bandage over the gaping hole of fear that’s opened up beneath them, but Matt seems to take some strength from it anyways.

It’s hard to gauge how much time passes, stuck in this metal-edged twilight, but the bruising on the side of his face eventually fades from a fire to a mere twinge, so it must be at least another couple of days. The residual ache from whatever the druids did to him seeps out of his bones, too. His hands are still a painful mess, but he feels really clear-headed for the first time since they were taken and he feels a little strength returning to his body. It’s a boon he won’t take for granted.

The guards don’t bother to punish them as long as they keep their voices to a low murmur. At least, they don’t punish them often. Despite the threat of electrocution and more bruises, it’s such a relief to be able to speak, to converse, to share words and have them shared in return. Even if the most pressing topics are also the most distressing. 

The other prisoners—_people_, Shiro’s realizing, alien but not so other—sometimes speak quietly and furtively about how they were taken, what they were taken from. They speak softly and brokenly about the crews and companions and families who were left behind, didn’t escape capture, didn’t make it. Sometimes they speak tightly and angrily about the Galra—colonizer, enemy, _scourge_—but mostly they speak fearfully of never getting out of this place, of dying at the hands of one of the Galra gladiators. Or worst, at the hands of one named _Myzax_, someone the prisoners call _monster_ and the guards call_ Champion_. 

Matt can barely bring himself to speculate about what’s happened to his father, but they both take some bleak comfort in the fact that wherever Sam was taken, it’s away from _here_.

Shiro is certain of so little, but he’s certain of one thing.

The Galra may be feeding them well, but this place is for the disposable. 

The guards bare their fangs and leer down at them and call them _grist for the glory of Lord Zarkon’s Empire_ while the other prisoners huddle together and mutter _we’re going to die, we’re going to die_—

Shiro tries his best to keep Matt from giving in, from listening to those scared and resigned voices, uttering defiant encouragements out of the side of his mouth whenever he can.

It’s for himself as much as for anyone else around him who can hear it. 

*

_Meridian Four_, they keep saying, _just like Meridian Four_.

—_resemblance to an incident eleven years ago that claimed the lives of six people, including the entire shuttle crew. It was determined that a medical oversight had led to an unfit crew member being approved for the mission, which resulted in disaster when_—

And even worse.

_Pilot error_.

Keith seethes and seethes and _seethes_.

Numbed and raw and so angry—god, he doesn’t have a word for the splintering, _burning_ thing that’s eaten away where his lungs should be—Keith holes up in his room like an animal retreating into its burrow, digging himself in, scrabbling for some kind of hold, something he can use to prove them all wrong.

He needs to know what really happened.

Keith combs obsessively through the Garrison’s press releases, digs into the intranet sites for technical reports, watches and re-watches every scrap of news coverage. All while that single, compulsive thought throbs through him like a heartbeat.

_Medical oversight. _

_Unfit crew member. _

_Pilot error_.

But he knows it wasn’t a pilot error. It _can’t_ be that.

He has nothing left but that, just the deep, immovable certainty that whatever happened to the _Tyche_ out in the Kuiper belt—whatever disaster tore the crew into the unknown—it _wasn’t Shiro’s fault_.

The Kerberos incident reports he finds are a tangle of technical jargon and speculative analysis, a mess of half-stated references to things he has no knowledge of or access to. Most of what he reads doesn’t make much sense to him, but he persists. 

Eventually—he barely remembers what day it is and certainly doesn’t know the last time he slept—Keith finds something in the flood of words that makes his heart pound. It’s the barest mention of something they’re calling _reconstructive simulations_, and—this is _it_, this _must_ be it—it’s based on real data from the Kerberos mission.

Dizzy with revelation, Keith realizes that Flight Command must have programmed a sim with that data to try to understand what happened on Kerberos. Pilots and techs must be running it over and over again, trying to make sense of it all, moving the investigation forward the only way they can when the real event was 7.5 billion kilometers away.

Mimicry.

If there really was a pilot error, they would have found it in the data. The sim would have reproduced it, and the stand-in pilot would have experienced it.

Keith can see for himself, experience it for himself.

He makes himself wait until nightfall. 

*

It isn’t until they’re finally roused out of the cage and lined up to go die in the arena that Shiro understands how useless his encouragements had been. All those hopeful words didn’t make a difference, and won’t. Matt is whip-smart and a tremendous communications tech, but he’s barely combat trained. With the way he had imitated Shiro, mirrored his resistance, the Galra guards flanking them don’t know that. Shiro feels a swell of deadened anger because he knows they don’t care.

Others are already pleading their cases, begging to be spared the arena. It grows into a babble of desperate pleas—_I can’t fight, I can’t fight at all, don’t put me in there, don’t make me fight!_—and they reach out to the guards for mercy. The tangle and clamour of it becomes too much for the prisoners to keep moving forward. The guards react only with disgust, fangs bared in snarls as their prods flare to life. They strike at the prisoners who are closest, shocking and hitting whatever bodies are in reach, driving them back.

“Weak!” one of them spits in contempt as prisoners fall away from him, crying out in pain. “You are all weak! If you cannot fight, then what is the point of you? Soft! Waste of air!”

“They will be cured soon enough,” another says, sounding both annoyed and bored as he shoves prisoners forward with more force, pushing them back into lines. Under threat of those vicious, sparking prods, Matt is shoved in front of Shiro, and they’re both pushed to the front.

“Don’t bruise the meat,” a third guard warns the others, “or they won’t even put on a good show.” 

_A good show_.

They can all hear the crowd now, the crush of hungry voices so loud that it’s more of a sensation than a sound, crawling across their skin, coming up through their feet into their bones. The lines of prisoners are shoved ever-forward until Shiro can see their final destination.

A ramp slanting upwards, leading them straight to a huge set of sealed doors.

Like most things made by the Galra, they’re metal and featureless and too big, scaled large like the doors of an aircraft hanger. As Shiro stares at them, they judder violently in their frame, and the crowd erupts into even more deafening howls. Something wet sloshes through the slight gap, splatters up to his feet. Shiro wills himself not to look at it.

They’re made to wait, fear creeping ever higher, palpable and pungent. Occasionally, the doors jolt again, shaking under the force of some impact, and the prisoners flinch away only for the crackle of the prods or the flash of blades to root them back in place. Shiro’s hands start to tremble, to twinge with pain, even when he clenches them into tight fists to try to keep them still. He tries to keep his breathing even, tries to make himself ready for this—whatever horror this is going to be, he’ll claw his way out of it with his failing, _useless_ bare hands if he has to, he’ll claw them both out of this—

Some order comes through, and the guards key the doors open. An awful wall of light and noise hits them as the doors slide open and the arena is revealed. A sea of dull bare metal, stained and smeared, interrupted only by a handful of pillars and sunk well below the level of the spectators. There are stands that rise up—and up and _up_—brimming with so many Galra that they become a blur of seething purple, black, red.

They’re chanting, a rhythmic burst of repeating syllables.

_Champion. Champion. Champion._

The front-most guard points his blade directly into Matt’s chest.

“The small one is first,” he announces, and Matt makes a sound of pure animal dread.

_Matt is going to die if I don’t do something_. The thought rings through Shiro like a horrible bell, his whole being pierced through by it, the surge of adrenalin making him feel sick. _He’s going to die, he’s going to die and it’s going to be my fault_—

“You’re going to be fine,” Shiro says out loud, vows it so that Matt can hear it clearly, tries to bolster him with just his voice. “You can do this.”

But Matt isn’t hearing him. He’s staring past his own hands at some premonition only he can see, his face pale and his breath coming too fast.

“I’m not going to make it,” he says, wavering, “I’ll never see my family again.”

_A good show_.

Shiro bursts into motion before the half-wild idea even fully forms, and it’s easy—too easy—to let all the stifled fury rise up in him and overflow. He lunges for the front-most guard so abruptly that it’s easy to wrest the blade out of his hands. 

“This is _my_ fight!” Shiro yells, declares it as boldly as he can, tries to match the imperious tone that all Galra seem to use. His mind races, scrabbling for the right angle, the right way to play this.

The guards must be used to prisoners trying to make a break for it here, right at the threshold, but they must not be used to a prisoner making a show of themselves, staking a claim like this. The guards don’t expect him to turn on the other prisoners, to lunge at Matt with the blade and take them both down to the ground with a dramatic snarl. “I want blood!” he yells, and he can only hope the guards find it convincing.

Shiro doesn’t know how deep the wound is that he leaves on Matt’s leg, but he knows it won’t kill him, and that’s all that matters. 

“_Take care of your father_,” he hisses, and that’s all he can get out before he’s seized by guards and hauled up off of him. The last Shiro sees of him is the comprehension dawning in Matt’s eyes, widened first by shock and pain and now by realization.

Then Shiro is thrown bodily into the light and noise of the arena with nothing but the stolen blade still clutched in his hand.

*

This isn’t even the first time that Keith has broken into the sim lab past curfew, but it is the first time he’s gone all the way into the advanced sections without say so, where they keep the most sophisticated modules.

He uses Shiro’s old codes to get past the last few doors. He’s made uneasy somehow by the fact that they actually work, still, even though Shiro is—

_No_.

He can’t think about that right now.

Based on what he’d read, they’d plugged the mission data into the best machine they could, but it still takes ages to load, the data raw and the program unrefined. Keith sits back in the pilot’s chair to wait. Then, hands guided by some uneasy feeling, he buckles himself in.

The displays come online one by one, configured imperfectly to match the systems of the _Tyche_ shuttle, with readings from the HAB pouring in as if in real time.

Everything is nominal. Everything is calm and ordinary. The trickle of data from the ice drill, the idling HAB systems, the life signs from the crew’s suits, the seismograph and the two dozen other environmental sensors—they’re all sitting perfectly in their acceptable ranges.

The data indicates a normal day on Kerberos. A balmy minus two hundred and twenty two degrees Celsius in the sun. A gentle pattering of radioactive particles on the detectors, the usual EMR weather of the outer solar system and nothing the suits weren’t designed to handle. The door seal logs show that Shiro and the Holts had been out for an hour already, getting a few ice cores at a new location. Power levels on their suits had been at about two thirds, which is exactly what they should have been for an out-of-HAB excursion like this one. 

It’s so exactly like what Shiro had read to him out loud as he’d studied his procedure manuals that Keith feels like he isn’t even reading the data, just watching it all unfold in his mind’s eye. God, Keith can almost hear Shiro’s voice—

There’s a burst from the EMR detectors, a blast of static that means a sharp spike in the readings of high energy particles. And there’s another noise, interference picked up by the radio unlike anything that Keith’s ever heard. A low crackle that becomes louder and louder until it’s a thrumming roar, almost too loud to stand—something charged and metallic and _wrong_—

And then the gravimetrics go insane.

Everything else overloads. Every alarm goes off. Every sensor redlines or blanks. What had been a gentle influx of parseable data is suddenly a flood of nonsense. The whole sim jolts so violently that even with his harness buckled Keith almost smashes into the control panel. He has to catch himself on his forearms, slamming into the hard edge of it while his guts lurch and the sim _moves_—the instruments can’t even tell _which way_—and then it all goes black.

The only sound is Keith’s frantic breathing.

_What the fuck was that? _

He’s so panicked and so thrown that he doesn’t know what’s happening when the door of the sim is wrenched open and someone tries to haul Keith out by his elbow.

Seized by instinct and fear, Keith fights to get away.

*

It was an accident.

That’s what Keith tells them—again—but Commander Iverson winces as he adjusts the wad of ice-soaked paper towel on his swelling eye and looks extremely unconvinced. Keith doesn’t think he’s ever seen the man this livid. 

“Middle of the goddamned night,” he mutters. “Breaking into a goddamned restricted area—"

“Sir, I wasn’t—” Keith tries.

“I don’t care what right you think you have to classified information pertaining to an ongoing investigation, or to tamper with—”

“I wasn’t tampering with anything!"

“_This is not your damn playground!_” Iverson shouts, face almost purpling with rage.

“_I’m not playing!_” Keith shouts back.

There’s something in his chest that’s too much like a lit fuse.

His heart is still hammering. He can feel his hands shaking. He’s burning so hot and sharp that he doesn’t care anymore. What happened in the sim—whatever the fuck it was that happened in the sim—it cut away his last shred of restraint, of control. 

_Liars_.

He doesn’t know what he experienced in there or what it means, but there’s no evidence of any kind of crash, any kind of pilot error. No evacuation protocol had been triggered, no launch countdown had been started. The engines on the shuttle hadn’t fired. The crew was out collecting ice cores—Jesus, _no one was even in the shuttle_—and everything was normal. There was nothing, absolutely nothing wrong, until the sensors all redlined and everything turned inside out.

“It wasn’t Shiro’s fault,” Keith snaps.

They stare at each other. Eventually Iverson sighs impatiently, and puts down the wet wad of paper towel.

“Cadet, I know Lieutenant Shirogane meant a lot to you, and that he listed you as his emergency contact. But legally speaking, you’re not his next of kin.”

Keith stiffens like someone sent a shock up his spine. 

“I might as well be.”

“There are _laws_, Cadet—”

“I need to know what happened to him!”

“And we’re determining that! We’re following due process! But apparently you just couldn’t wait. You had to force your way in—”

“I didn’t force my way in anywhere!”

“_No_,” Iverson says with heavy snideness, “you used stolen codes for _that_.”

_Stolen?_

“…Shiro gave me those codes,” Keith says, taken aback. “He—I didn’t steal them.”

The security sergeant standing to one side actually snorts in disbelief. There’s a bruise on her jaw where Keith’s elbow connected in the scuffle. 

“Right,” she says, crossing her arms, “and Shirogane just handed over classified entry codes that are only given to designated staff officers. To a cadet. A Lieutenant would know better.”

“He did it so I could get some extra training,” Keith grits out, riled by her tone and stung by the mention of anything that Shiro would know, anything he would do.

_You didn’t know him_, he thinks, and it’s sour in his throat.

“Those codes you used are level three,” Iverson says flatly, “which means you ended up with information that’s an offence to possess unless you’re of the appropriate rank. It doesn’t matter how you got it.” 

“I… didn’t know that,” Keith says stiffly, and the security officer’s expression goes one shade angrier.

“Bull_shit_,” she snaps. “That’s the weakest story I’ve ever heard. You were trespassing in a restricted area with someone else’s codes and _you knew it_, you little—”

“So _what?_” Keith bites out. “It’s _done_.”

“You’re in so much shit, Cadet—"

“_Sergeant_,” Iverson barks, and she subsides, but he looks like he’s just as ready to bite Keith’s head off.

And he does. At length.

Keith stares Iverson dead in the eye while the man shouts at him, while he pontificates about his _discipline problem_, about how finished his career is, how he’ll never be able to avoid a dishonourable discharge. That would have frightened him a few months ago, would make him ache with regret for the loss of what Shiro had helped him build here. But now? There is no fear left in him, burnt away by the rage.

Keith resists, just barely, spitting in Iverson’s face.

There was no pilot error.

_Liars_.

*

Shiro had thought he had faced his fear of death, that he was ready to meet his end. He was so wrong. There are so many other ways to be afraid to die.

Focusing so much on his body’s incremental and inevitable failure, it had blinded him to all the ways that a body could fail abruptly, suddenly.

Violently.

As the deafening roar of the crowd bites into him from all sides—as the Champion’s weapon comes at him again and the pillar he’s hiding behind cracks and shakes, splinters of hot rock flying into his eyes and stinging his face—Shiro realizes with a whole-body frisson of terror that he had simply lacked the imagination.

There are so many other ways to die.

*

Keith has been told every single regulation he’s broken, every offense he could be charged with and under which body of law. He still doesn’t care, and Iverson is clearly getting sick of it. By the time there’s a knock on the door, the Commander seems relieved to be able to get up and get away from him.

“About damn time,” Iverson mutters as he opens the door, then to the person standing there, he says, “Do whatever you can. I’m done here. The rest can wait for the morning.” 

Whoever it is responds with a perfunctory _yes sir_, and Keith sucks in a breath because—

The last person he expects to walk into the room is _Adam_.

Distantly, Keith knows that Iverson leaves the room without another word and that the security sergeant follows him—she throws him one last parting glare as she turns to go—but as far as Keith is concerned, everything narrows down to the man he didn’t think he’d ever have to say a word to ever again.

“So. Iverson dragged you into this?” Keith meant it to be a statement, but his tone slips up at the end. He’s not sure what he should be ready for, what Adam’s presence even means.

“No,” Adam says. He looks like he got dressed in a hurry. His uniform jacket is open and his glasses are slightly askew. “You caused a breach alarm when you used Takashi’s codes after hours. Everyone on the secured sim teams got the call.”

“You’re on a secured sim team?” Keith asks… and then he realizes. “_You_. _You’re_ investigating Kerberos.”

Adam just nods.

Something tightens in Keith’s chest until it pops.

“You’re not Shiro’s next of kin either,” Keith says, hears the tremor of anger twisted up in his own voice. “Joining the investigation was the best way to get answers anyway, right? Get answers before the rest of us?” He falls back in his chair, hands running over his face, trying to keep it all in, keep himself from really losing his shit. But then something occurs to him, and he cuts his gaze back to Adam’s face. “You… could have _told_ me.”

Adam’s expression does something complicated.

“I was asked to join the investigation, that wasn’t my idea,” Adam explains, “and there are regulations about who can have access to that kind of information—”

“You could have just told me!” Keith snaps.

“You know I couldn’t have done that without serious consequences,” Adam counters, matter-of-factly. 

Some part of Keith is disappointed that Adam doesn’t rise to meet his anger, and all the angrier because of it. He’s raring for a fight, blood singing with it. It feels like he’s been stuck in this chair for hours. Fuck, maybe he _has_.

He suddenly wonders what time it is, how early Adam had to wake up to come here and feed him this shit. Based on the dark circles under the man’s eyes, maybe he never went to sleep. Now that Keith is looking behind the reflection on his glasses, he can actually see that Adam looks pretty seriously worn down. 

“Keith,” he says, “what the hell were you doing in the sim?”

“Finding out what really happened.”

“If you ran the sim to the end, then you know. We don’t know what really happened.”

They look at each other, and it’s nothing like staring down Iverson. For the first time in days, it seems, something cold presses down the burning inside his chest. For the first time since Kerberos failed, Keith suddenly sees something outside his own pain.

Keith realizes that he doesn’t know what it would be like, getting to have someone like Shiro and then having it not work out. Watching that someone do something truly extraordinary second-hand, and then losing them second-hand too. Keith doesn’t know what it would be like to get asked that question—_Will you help us post-mortem the mission that took his life?_

Adam is a technically gifted man. Adam is smart, and qualified, and god—he _flew_ with Shiro, trained with him—so of course they asked him to join the investigation. It probably didn’t matter to the higher ups that he and Shiro had been together, they’d just needed someone who knew him as a pilot. Keith can suddenly see the burden of that in Adam’s eyes. He suddenly wishes he’d managed to say something—_anything_—to him at that awful ceremony. He swallows a lump of something unpleasant, something coloured more than a little with regret and sympathy.

“The gravimetrics,” Keith says hoarsely. “What could have caused that?”

“We don’t know,” Adam says. “I’ve never seen anything like it, even theoretically. Something could have happened to the instruments, but no one can reproduce a malfunction like that.”

“What about the interference, the radio spike? And the radiation—"

“We don’t _know_,” Adam says again. “Just suddenly—" He makes a gesture with his hands. Like an explosion that makes no sense. Like chaos. As though suddenly, _everywhere was up_.

Keith remembers how the sim had bucked and jolted, trying to interpret spatial and orientation data that didn’t make sense. He still feels thrown, something deep in his belly still disoriented. His bruised forearms still throb.

“We just—we don’t have any answers yet,” Adam says, and Keith isn’t used to this man sounding so unsure. 

“…will you tell me?” Keith asks, feeling desperate and small. “When you figure it out, will you find a way to tell me?”

Adam opens his mouth, then hesitates. “You know they’re going to discharge you after this. They can’t ignore the fact that you used classified codes.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. The heat in his chest may have died down a little, but something inside him is still burning down to its end. “I’m out of here.”

An almost pained expression comes across Adam’s face.

“You’ve got so much potential,” he says, almost to himself. “It’s a shame to see it wasted like this.”

Wasted?

_You’ve got a lot of potential, Keith,_ Shiro had told him, all those years ago as they’d both stood in the shadow of the _Calypso_ shuttle._ What you do with it is up to you. _

And just like that, the anger spikes back up. The sympathy isn’t enough to stop it.

Shiro deserved better than this. 

“_Why?_” Keith demands. “Why are they blaming Shiro? We don’t know what happened, but we know it wasn’t his fault.”

“You don’t have all the information—"

“It wasn’t his fault!”

“There are too many unknowns to say that for sure. And there are detailed life sign records from the crew’s IEVA suits. There are medical and status reports from the weeks leading up to the landing. His health issues had been getting worse while he was outbound.”

“That doesn’t mean that what happened had anything to do with him!”

“The kinds of symptoms mentioned in those reports are significantly worse than what he had been experiencing before the launch, and the most likely outcome is that they compromised his—"

“Are you even listening to yourself? There’s no proof—”

“You didn’t see him!” Adam says sharply, finally losing his temper a little. “You weren’t there after his appointments. Takashi wasn’t—he wasn’t doing as well as you think. I don’t even think he told me all of it, and his medical records are still sealed. I don’t—I don’t know what his full prognosis was. But I did the research. I contacted the experts. These kinds of conditions, you don’t just manage them indefinitely. You _can’t_. They’re—"

“Degenerative,” Keith interrupts. Saying it feels like pins in his mouth.

“Yes, degenerative,” Adam says, bites the word off like he doesn’t want to hear it either. He takes a breath while his jaw works, and he blinks down at his hands clenched together on the table between them. “We can’t pretend that his condition couldn’t have been a factor. It’s negligent not to consider it. It’s my opinion, and it’s the opinion of Commander Iverson and other members of the Admiralty that Takashi wasn’t taking full responsibility for his illness. That Commander Holt should have considered other candidates for the mission.”

Keith remembers Sam Holt’s voice carrying into the hallway, saying _our flight surgeon cleared him already_ and _Shiro is the best pilot in the Garrison by far_. Keith feels his teeth grinding together.

“Are you a doctor?” he says.

“No, but—"

“Do any doctors share your _opinion?_”

Silence.

“A lot can change in eight months,” Adam says, finally.

He says it without meeting Keith’s eyes, and there’s something… _guilty_ about his posture, something remorseful. Keith doesn’t know what happened between them before the launch, doesn’t know what went so wrong, but Keith is suddenly sure that this is a piece of it.

“_You’re_ the one who told him,” Keith says, the idea taking shape as he speaks it. “You’re the one who told Iverson about Shiro’s health problems, _you_ tried to get Shiro taken off the mission—”

“I wish I had!” Adam bursts out, “I wish I’d pushed it more! I wish he’d been taken off the mission! Then he would be _here_, he would be _safe!_ He could’ve been getting proper treatment, and I could’ve—maybe we could’ve—we would’ve had more _time_—"

It’s so sudden and vehement and bereft that Keith feels pushed back into his chair. Keith can see the bare grief coming through the cracks in Adam’s expression before the man runs a hand over his face to try to put himself back together. 

Something in Keith is relieved because—

_I know how you feel. _

He’s not the only one sick with it, sick that Shiro is gone. Black and blue and bruised with the loss of him—

But he can’t think about that right now.

“I didn’t even have to tell Iverson,” Adam says, straightening his glasses and regaining some of his composure. “He was already concerned.”

“That… doesn’t change anything,” Keith says. He’s still brimming with dull outrage. “You’re all just toeing Sanda’s line. There’s still no actual proof that Shiro did anything wrong. You’re still giving up on him. The _whole damn Garrison_ is giving up on him!”

_The Garrison’s Golden Child, one First Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane._

Keith thinks suddenly of all those accolades and articles full of praise, all those triumphant photos and broken records up in frames on the walls, proudly displayed. It makes him feel sick.

“And what about you?” Adam counters. “Shiro worked so hard to help you, to get you ready for officer training, and _this_ is how you repay him? Who’s giving up?”

Keith is stunned to angry silence.

“…I guess Shiro deserved better than either of us,” Keith says, lets it bite.

Adam stares at him, clearly stung by the words, almost disbelieving. Then he looks away.

“Good luck out there, Cadet,” he says, and he stands to leave.

*

Keith is escorted to his room under guard—a different security officer this time, thankfully—and he’s told that he will remain in disciplinary custody until the morning when the rest of this whole process can unfold. Keith simply stares into the man’s face until he stops talking. Then Keith is dismissed, the door is closed, and there’s the sound of the security officer’s boots scuffing the floor as he settles into his overnight post just outside.

Keith doesn’t care.

The fuse inside him finally burns down, finally hits the incendiary waiting in his chest.

The explosion is silent.

It only takes him fifteen minutes to pack everything he cares to keep—his knife, his second pair of shoes, his books, a few keepsakes and documents, minimal supplies—and then only another five to silently work the window open and another forty to sneak out of the barracks unseen. It’s a bit more complicated to get to the auxiliary hanger without getting caught, but his blood is on fire and he moves fast.

For a second he considers boosting one of the Garrison’s hoverbikes, but then he remembers the regulation trackers they all have under the main instrument panel and knows it would be a very bad idea. He pulls the cover off Shiro’s hoverbike instead and—stops. But he can’t stop, he doesn’t have time. This only works if he goes, _now_.

Cursing and apologizing under his breath, he throws his pack into the storage compartment, throws his leg over the seat, revs the engine to life, and then he guns it for the horizon like he never has before. The sheer speed of Shiro’s machine is almost frightening, the cold night air slicing at his cheeks and his heart beating wildly in his chest.

The Garrison is lost farther and farther behind him, fading into the dark with the rest of the landscape.

There’s only one place he can still go.

He turns south.

*

They’d hosed the blood off of him, given him a clean garment. Shiro is still shaking, trembling, every inch of him aching and bruised. His ears are still ringing, everything muffled in the aftermath. 

They shove him into some kind of cell, a new kind of cell that Shiro has never seen before. It’s bigger, brighter. There’s something like a cot, a place where he can actually lie down. An apparent upgrade, just for surviving.

A reward for defeating the Champion.

Shiro has no idea if Myzax is still alive. He feels bile rise in his throat, but it subsides into emptiness.

The barred door is slammed closed and locked behind him, irrevocable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms and Saints by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> Public funerals suck on a level that private ones don't. I've experienced a ceremony where there was enough press present that they had to be given their own cordoned off zone behind a barrier. They were respectful and unobtrusive, but having them there at all just added this surreal, spectator edge to something that was already no god damned fun. 
> 
> This chapter was especially rough for Keith, for a lot of reasons. For anyone wondering if this encounter with Adam is the last time they ever speak to each other, don't worry, it's not. I realized I couldn't let them go out like that, so there will be more for them. 
> 
> Also, from what I’ve learned recently, the Romans largely and literally believed that compassion was a character flaw and that such weaknesses should be expunged from the populace with prejudice before they spread and ruined Rome's greatness. Fun times!


	9. Shear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update! Holy crackers and cheese! Thanks so much for sticking with me, y'all are the best :')
> 
> So things are still really rough for our boys. This chapter continues the Descriptions of Captivity and Grief, and a heads up that it gets into the Mild Gore and Brief Body Horror. If you want more details about what's actually in the chapter before you read, you can check out the chapter end notes. 
> 
> As always, super giant thanks to my beta Sarah for helping me pull this crazy thing off. HUGS <3

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**9: Shear**

_Even though it shocked you  
Something’s electric in your blood_

*

Keith’s not legally supposed to have access to the house yet, but he goes there anyway, cuts open the government sticker seal on the doorway with his knife and kicks his way into the mausoleum of his childhood.

Being back there is like peeling away an old bandage and finding an unfamiliar scar. Did the wound really used to look like that? Is that really how the gouge was made?

He feels like there are so many holes in him that he can’t even tell the shape of them apart anymore. But the hole that Shiro leaves behind isn’t something taken away from him alone, but something cut out from the world, ripped away from the future, and for some reason that’s _worse_. Shiro disappearing like this. Shiro lost out in the frozen edges of the solar system. Shiro being blamed for something that can’t be his fault. That’s so much more unbearable because it doesn’t make _sense_. It’s all so fucking _senseless._

He hadn’t let it all sink in, not truly. Not until now.

It hits him in that moment—right in the centre of his chest, the centre of himself—so hard that it hurts to breathe. He walks, sightless, from room to room to room, his feet kicking up a near-decade of dust. He goes in circles around the small house—the shabby living room, the bare kitchen, the first bedroom, the second, the living room again—

Shiro is gone.

They blamed him for everything. 

The garrison is _lying_, and Keith can never go back.

He stops, one hand on the doorframe of the bedroom he hasn’t called his own since he was ten. It never felt small when he lived here, but seeing it now, it’s barely a closet. Without looking, his hand finds the notches cut into the wood that had marked his growth over the years. He remembers being in this exact spot a long time ago, standing proud while his dad measured him. He remembers being in this exact spot for what he’d thought was the last time, wondering if he would ever touch those marks again.

Keith fingers the roughened wood and doesn’t feel like he’s come home. He knows this place, but he doesn’t feel like he knows where he is. Everything inside him is untethered, sliced loose and unanchored. His belly is a void, a twisting hole of colliding debris. Paralyzed, he realizes that he doesn’t know what to do. Not in this moment, not in the next moment, not in the moment after that. Tomorrow is a blank, awful thing that he can’t bring himself to think about, and then—

_I’m never going to be a real pilot. I’ll never go to space._

The thought pierces him like a needle. It hurts so sharp, so white-hot and sudden and deep that he almost can’t feel it.

He can only register the shock of it as it burns through him, cutting him away from everything the last four years of his life had promised. His future as an astropilot has closed up behind him, cauterized, that path swept over and erased.

It’s all gone. Shiro took it with him, and this is exactly what he’d been afraid of.

He knew—he’d fucking _known_—that a wish and a handshake isn’t strong enough to build a future on. That all of this would come crashing down in flames at the merest change in any of the vectors.

He should have known.

All orbits decay, and flying is only ever a kind of falling. 

*

Keith wakes up cold, choking on dust.

He’s on the very edge of his old bed, curled on his side to minimize contact with the foul-smelling mattress. He’s still fully dressed and his skin feels tight and dirty. His whole body aches, his head throbbing dully, but he pushes himself upright anyways.

Through the filthy window, he can see that it’s dark out. He can’t be sure how much time has passed, whether it’s the same night. Judging by the foul taste in his mouth, he could have slept all the way through to the next. However long he was out, it wasn’t enough to make up for how exhausted he is, but he doesn’t want to lay back down.

How long ago was it that he stopped sleeping in order to look for answers? How long ago had he been thrown into the sim controls like a rag doll? Sitting through Iverson’s tirade feels like a different life. That brittle, awful conversation with Adam feels like a bad dream. 

_What am I going to do now? _

For a long time, he sits and stares blankly at the faint shadow of his own hand gripping the edge of the bedframe, knuckles still bruised from where he’d hit Iverson in the eye. He listens intently to the silence so he doesn’t have to hear his own thoughts flooding back in after the mercy of unconsciousness.

It becomes more and more unbearable. The stillness, the heaviness in the stale air, the faint starlight coming in through the window showing only faded greys and sucking shadows. It’s dead and bleak and empty and the anger and grief that have burned a home in his sternum flare again because he’s alone—for the second time, _completely alone_—and _this_ place is all that’s left to him?

_This_ is all he has?

After everything, just silence and dust.

He fists the old mattress, rips it out of the frame, and drags it passed the marked doorframe, through the rest of the house. With a raw yell, he throws it out the front door with all his strength, watches it roll and crumple with a sad clink of springs. His hands clench and open and clench again, and it feels… _good_. His harsh breathing pumps cold air in and out of him and it’s the first clean thing he’s felt since he came here. By the smallest margin, he feels less wretched.

He goes back into the house for more. 

By the time dawn is lightening the horizon and colour is seeping back into the world, all the windows have been wedged open to let in the scouring winter air and the guts of the house have been thrown up all over the desiccated lawn.

Everything soft had to go, everything too touched by the last eight years.

It’s all moldering, musty, stained, warped, scoured, cracked, faded. The climate here is usually dry as chalk and harsh with heat, but the roof hasn’t stood up to the few rain storms that blow in each year and that’s enough for seams to have split open and rot to have taken hold in the darkest corners. Everything Keith moves reveals an imprint, the mark of where his dad had last left it.

He shoves, drags, tosses, kicks it all into the pile outside and leaves it there to bleach in the weakened winter sun.

Sweating and sore and filthy, he finally allows himself to stop. With the sun finally seeping a little bit of warmth back into the world, Keith grabs the one clean blanket he’d brought with him and curls up with it against the side of the hoverbike, facing the light.

The familiar feeling rises in him then, the urge to go out into the wilderness, to give in to the pull in his bones. He doesn’t have the strength to fight it and he doesn’t have the strength to follow it, so he does nothing.

Shivering, he falls asleep again to the sound of the desert coming awake. 

*

The next day, Keith doesn’t even turn back to look at the house and all that debris washed out in front of it like a tideline. He’d woken up facing the horizon and he doesn’t even pause to eat or wash off any of the dust before he’s slinging himself over the hoverbike and revving it into life.

He rides straight for the outcrops of rock that ring the distance, lets the magnetic force in his gut pull him wherever. He spends the day clambering over the boulders and plateaus, scraping his palms and knees raw, letting the dry air and the exertion burn his lungs clear. He has no idea what he’s looking for—what he thinks he’s even going to find out here except for scrub brush and snake dens—but keeping his mind on the next handhold, on the next rise, it keeps his eyes on the ground, away from where Kerberos might be in its orbit, away from the sky that isn’t his anymore.

It keeps the grief away.

He rides back at sunset, sleeps like the dead, and then wakes up the next day and does it again.

*

The guards shove Shiro into the arena again, shocking him with prods to make him go. The jolting, crawling pain is enough, but it also locks his right hand into a fist, seizing it with pins and needles.

_Shit_, _not now_.

He has to drop the club they’d forced on him, has to claw at his right hand with his left, desperately trying to peel it open—_no no no, not now!_—but there’s a shift in the noise of the crowd, a swell in the jeers they throw down at him, and he looks up.

His opponent enters the ring on the opposite side, brandishing a club in each of its four hands, its Galra armour bright and new looking. It’s not a brute this time, a heavy giant like the last one. This one is more his size, more like a reptile. Lean and sinewy and—

It comes for him like a lightning strike, faster almost than his eyes can follow. There’s no time to pick up his own club, no time—

He doesn’t think anymore, his whole body screaming at him to _move, get out, fight back_—

_Survive_.

The cold logic of it comes over him in an instant. He has no other weapons. His right hand is useless meat anyway.

He has to lure it in close, let it get a few body blows in before he can throw it down and keep it pinned. Mechanically, like a piston, he uses his frozen fist like a bludgeon until the skin over his knuckles splits. He doesn’t feel it happen.

Right to the bloody end, they cheer him for it.

*

It takes four days for the hoverbike to run out of fuel. It takes five days for Keith to run out of food, and a sixth for the hunger pangs and the restlessness to grow too sharp for him to stand anymore.

He doesn’t take the hoverbike into town—Garrison security might actually be looking for him, and Shiro’s big red machine is too distinctive—so he walks the two hours it takes to get to what his dad had jokingly called _the edge of civilization_, marked by the nearest fuel station slash convenience store.

He shoves stale ready-made sandwiches into his face as fast as he can physically chew them and ignores the look of muted judgment on the clerk’s face. He buys a handful more and knows it’s enough to get him through another half week. He buys a full can of extra fuel too and savours the burn in the muscles of his arms as he carries it all the way back to the house.

He lies down in the shadow of where the couch used to be and sleeps off the ache in his belly and limbs.

*

A rhythm emerges as the days and then the nights get warmer.

Keith wakes with the light and eats whatever breakfast he pulls out of his bag while he sits on the front step and watches the sun finish rising. Then he’s on his feet and checking over the hoverbike, looking for any damage from the previous day. Then he’s on it and gone, out into the wilderness. He spends the daylight hours hiking, learning the landscape, not thinking. He takes his notebook with him, writes down where he goes and what he sees. He doesn’t write down what he feels.

When the sun starts to get low and he starts to get tired of the pull in his gut, he gets back on his hoverbike and flies back to the house. Then he washes up as best he can, scrubs off the dust and dirt from the day, cleans and bandages whatever scrapes or cuts he got while he was wandering.

Sometimes, only when he has to, he makes the long walk into town to get money from the account his dad left him, to get food and fuel, to get any other supplies he needs. 

Sometimes, rarely, there’s a launch, just visible beyond the northern horizon. There’s a trail of rising cloud and the muffled crush of distant, faded noise. Keith tells himself not to watch, to look away, but he never can. 

At the end of each day he sleeps, fitfully, dreaming in shades of loss.

Then he does it again the next day.

*

Shiro rises every third or fourth day to howls from the crowd, to the metallic tang of blood and ozone and the sharp stink of fear.

Shiro feels himself become an animal, reduced to instinct and life or death cunning. Impulse and good reflexes are the only things that keep him alive against gladiators a third again his height or monsters many times his size. He fights out in the arena in a blur of terrified adrenalin, and he rests in his cell in a haze of terrified blankness.

He hates to kill—_hates _the frenzied, horrible scuffle of it—but most of the time there’s no choice here. No choice except the choice to die, to throw down his weapon and bare his throat. It’s a bleak, horrible thing to know about himself that he wants to survive more than he wants to avoid murder and butchery. That he can kill if it comes to it. That he’s good at it.

But he _needs_ to survive.

He needs to find Matt and Sam and make sure they’re both safe. He needs to get back to Earth, needs to tell them everything he’s seen, needs to warn them. He needs to keep his promise to Keith.

Shiro tries to be merciful, when there’s breath for it, but the Galra gladiators are hardened and zealous, and more often than not mercy is a mistake. He learns too late what these alien fighters and their unfamiliar weapons can do.

He pays for his mistakes in scars.

*

Being in town is the same strange mix of familiar unfamiliarity that he feels at the house.

Keith collects curious and suspicious looks from the locals wherever he goes. Sometimes he gets long lingering stares that he doesn’t understand, that make the back of his neck prickle. He doesn’t know what they see, why they won’t look away.

He wonders if any of them recognize him as a local too. He wonders if anyone remembers him, or at least recognizes his dad’s features in him. He’s never thought that he and his dad really resembled each other—other than the shared colour of their dark hair and a penchant for keeping to themselves—but he can’t compare his features to his mother’s, so he just doesn’t know.

He wonders if anyone here really knew his family, back when it was whole, if there’s anyone around who ever met his mom. Some of them must have known his dad, at least, must remember him. He wonders how many people remember what the papers had called _the Old Creek Fire_, if anyone still thinks about the three lives saved and the one life lost.

He has the urge sometimes to go to the stationhouse where his dad worked those long days and nights, wants to see his dad’s name etched into the wall of honourable dead. Sometimes he wants to try to find the dispatcher he used to know—Shauna was her name—but he doesn’t dare. Hearing her voice again after the day his dad died might tear him open so wide he can’t close himself up again.

One scar at a time, he thinks.

*

Shiro feels his skin burning, burning, _burning_ under his eyes, across his nose, and he cries out with the agony of it as the bright laser-edged blade almost blinds him. Light searing across his vision, he strikes out desperately for the thing’s throat.

His bare fist finds its target, hard, and he hears the sounds of frantic choking before the scorching blade finally falls away from his face.

Still seeing comet trails of that too-bright purpled glow, face still throbbing with pain, he wrenches the blade away from the thing and gives it back, point first, between its ribs.

*

Some days Keith ignores the second gravity that’s settled inside him, lets it pull him to no avail. Sometimes it grates on him, makes him seriously uneasy, because—

Well. He still doesn’t know what it _is_.

If it was just a vague instinct, a loose inclination, something indefinite, then he could chalk it up to a desire to get away from himself, from his own thoughts, from the wilderness his life has literally become. He could say that it’s just some echo of something in his own head, something a therapist might tell him he has to work through. But it doesn’t stay that way, diffuse and explicable.

It starts to get directional, insistent, specific. _Intrusive_. 

Some days he has dreams about going even farther into the wild, farther into the rocks and dried river beds. He dreams of something out there under the earth, something hidden behind the sky. Those are the days that he won’t even look at the horizon, and he spends his time with his back to it instead, trying to clean up the house and make things more liveable.

This is how he goes through the pile, eventually, salvages the furniture that only needed a good airing and some time out in the strengthening sun. He realizes the couch is fine after he beats the dust out of the cushions, and he’s relieved to not have to sleep on the floor anymore. The mattress that had been on his dad’s bed isn’t so bad, so he puts it back on the frame and then leaves it be. He keeps that door closed. He keeps a few more things—the top of a desk, a table lamp, a ratty corkboard, two of the kitchen chairs, a sheet that can be cut up to replace the curtains—and the rest he has to haul into town with the hoverbike. He goes to the dump in the middle of the night, flying slow and quiet to keep the trailer he’d rigged up steady and to avoid any unwanted attention. 

Some days he stays inside, spends hours and hours re-reading his books—principles of flight, astronomy, history of spaceflight, old pulp sci-fi, aeronautical tech guides, tactical maneuver manuals, physics textbooks—just so he doesn’t think so hard about the places out there in the desert he hasn’t been to yet, the nooks and crags he hasn’t explored.

Just so that he can tell himself he isn’t becoming obsessed.

*

Shiro feels his body hardening over the uncountable days, his senses sharpening, his self dulling, his memories of a time before this becoming unreal.

Sometimes his thoughts spiral into fear and he can’t stop dreading the terrible things that might have happened to Matt and Sam. Sometimes he’s suffocated with regret, can’t stop dwelling on the people he left behind on Earth—his parents, Adam, _Keith_—on how they must think he’s dead by now and what that must be doing to them. Sometimes he loses time, becomes aware that he’d been staring at nothing and thinking of nothing, feels so blank and separated from his own body that it doesn’t feel like it belongs to him. Sometimes the bare walls press in on him until panic hits him like a wave, making him pant and clutch at his own chest where his heart feels like it’s beating itself to pieces against his ribs. Sometimes his right arm spasms so badly that all he can do is cradle it, clench his teeth, and live in the agony of his own nerves and muscles failing.

He fights it all as best he can.

He fights the panic with meditation, fights the pain by distracting himself. He focuses, fiercely, on nothing but the rhythm of his own breathing for as long as he can. He counts to a thousand in English and then in Japanese. He does push ups until he can do sets of sixty, eighty, a hundred. He says hello to himself in every language he’d picked up as a kid bouncing between naval bases. He paces in circles around his cell until he’s dizzy. He runs calculations in his head by visualizing them in his mind’s eye, draws out orbits and approaches in the air with his finger.

Mostly, it only half works.

Rest of any kind is a minefield, always waiting to ambush him with memories, vivid and horribly _too much too much_. Sometimes it’s of fear and blood and death, the wrench of muscle and the edge of a slicing blade. Sometimes it’s of Earth, the afternoon light and the smell of the wind. Shiro can’t decide which is more like torture.

Trapped in this cell, it makes him trapped inside himself.

He becomes desperate for anything outside this fucking _box_, anything out in the world, even if it’s the world of the Galra and their arena. He tries to talk to the other prisoners and learn everything that he can, but he becomes aware of how they cower near him. He starts to learn the names they call him, in awe and disgust and dread.

_Warrior. _

_Champion_.

When he feels anything other than terribly, unbearably alone, he feels stained.

*

On his nineteenth birthday, Keith finds the telescope in the cramped attic, packed up in an unlabelled box. He lifts the precious thing out, checks it over in a rush to make sure nothing is broken. He’s so relieved to find it’s in one piece, a little dirty but in perfect working condition.

He _remembers_ this, remembers the way his dad was partial to stargazing. He remembers his dad showing him the sky charts, letting him trace the constellations. He can still remember how it felt to be lifted up to the eyepiece so he could see the roughened craters of the moon, made stark by long shadows. He remembers the red eye of Mars, the bright flame of Venus, the oblong smear of Saturn’s rings, and the faint pinprick glow of the Galilean moons around Jupiter. It had all felt so _close_.

Swept up in a flood of memories, Keith carries the telescope carefully outside. The sun is only just setting, but it won’t be long before the clear sky is brimming full of stars. He sets it up on the little knoll where the two of them used to come out together on warm nights, tries to put it exactly where he remembers his dad always placed it.

Thinking back on it—closing his eyes to dredge up every detail—what he actually remembers is his dad only ever setting it up in one spot, always starting out the night by pointing it in one direction. He’d muttered the same coordinates under his breath each time, sometimes like a private joke and sometimes like a mantra. _Ten degrees south of the big point_, he’d always said, _and southeast by east ‘til morning._

Keith says the words to himself, rolls them around in his mind. First he thinks of Peter Pan, of course, of the way his dad used to read to him about Wendy and the Lost Boys. But then he feels himself frown because—that can’t be right.

He’d learned all about this at the Garrison. When you’re looking at the stars from a point on the Earth, you’re supposed to use a spherical coordinate system. You can use azimuth and altitude or you can use right ascension and declination, but the Earth _rotates_. You can’t just use a compass to find things in the _sky_, it all changes over the course of a night. 

He points the telescope southeast by east anyway, tilts it down towards the horizon. He centres the view on what his dad had always called ‘the big point’—a steep, lonely mountain with a blunt top that Keith can’t remember the real name of—and then measures ten degrees to the south with three fingers outstretched, carefully turning the whole thing to line up with where his arm is pointing.

At first, it doesn’t quite sink in what he’s looking at. It’s just more rocky outcrops, more of the same dusty reddish landscape made redder in the fading light, more of the places he recognizes from his wanderings—

Keith jumps back from the eyepiece, heart suddenly pounding, because he _knows_ those rocks. He _knows _that dry and wild and unwelcoming stretch.

The telescope is pointing right where the thing in his gut keeps sending him out to search.

*

Shiro can’t really focus through the haze of blood loss. There are gashes along his left shoulder, down the middle of his back, his right calf. Then there’s the puncture on his inner thigh that’s been bleeding freely. It’s all making him dizzy and sick.

This Galra fighter likes to use hooks, of all things, as barbed and vicious as her taunts. He’s been slowed down too much now, limping and stumbling, and she knows she almost has him. With a flourish, she finally pulls the harpoon-like weapon out of its holster on her back, lets the crowd see exactly how she intends to finish him, how she intends to become the next Champion. They roar as she aims it at him with relish, her fangs showing in a wicked grin.

His vision is going grey at the edges, but maybe he can—

He can’t. He doesn’t move fast enough. 

The only thing that saves him is the unthinking way he puts his hand up between them, shielding his face. And it’s only when the barbed metal bolt pierces clean through his palm and lodges in the back of his hand that Shiro realizes that he can’t feel his right arm anymore.

He registers the jolt of the impact all the way through his bones—feels it wrenching at his shoulder when the wire starts to retract—but there’s no _pain_. It _should_ be agony. It _should_ be making him scream and writhe, the way it’s coming up through the skin. But all he feels is numbness. He sees it, his hand obscenely distorted and blood drenched and _wrong_, but then—it becomes distant, somehow, like it’s happening to someone else. He’s hauled forward by the harpoon caught in his hand, but he’s… calm. So calm.

He can’t even hear the crowd anymore. It’s all gone muffled and quiet somehow, like he’s hearing it from somewhere deep down and far away. 

Dreamlike and almost effortless, Shiro keeps his feet, braces himself, and at the right moment, when there’s just enough slack, he clenches his hand around the bolt speared through it and twists the wire around his bloodied fist. He digs his heels in and _pulls_, ripping the weapon right out of her grip. She still looks stunned when he swings it back into her face with a bone breaking crunch. She drops like a stone, hitting the ground knees first and then toppling over to the side.

The crowd seems to take a breath—

She doesn’t move.

—and then it _erupts_.

The wall of noise brings reality back to him like a sledgehammer. It’s too much, and the world darkens, tilts. Shiro passes out to the sounds of the arena shaking with wild cries of rage and triumph.

After that, there are only fragments.

Pain, the smell of blood, restraints, _pain_. Masks above him, a sickening purple light, something white hot blazing up his arm into his skull, into his_ brain_, someone _screaming_—

*

Keith doesn’t even know what he’s looking for, only that there _has_ to be more.

He tears through the house in a kind of fever, eyes locking on every little hole, crack, gap—Anything that’s not supposed to be there, anything that could be hiding something. He goes all around the outside of the house too, flashlight and crowbar ready in his trembling hands.

Two hours later, he doesn’t know what he expected. All he feels is shock, ringing through him until his mind is numb.

He’d found the advanced electronic equipment buried under the front porch, wrapped up tightly in thick plastic to keep out the dirt and the rain. He’d found the boxes of documents in the attic, print outs of topographical maps and calculations. Among them he’d found notes and journals written in his dad’s own unmistakable hand. Flipping through them had given him glances of someplace out there in the wild that his dad had nicknamed ‘Neverland’.

And he’d found the cache of plastic explosives under the floorboards with just enough detonators to commit a mild act of domestic terrorism.

Jesus.

_This is insane, this is insane, this is seriously_—

He wants to go straight to his dad’s grave and scream at it for answers.

But the cemetery is too far into town for comfort. He hasn’t been back there for years and the guilt of that still eats at him. He doesn’t want to go back now, in this state, feeling the way he’s feeling right now. He won’t do that. 

And besides. He knows—he _knows_—that there’s only one place that’s going to give him any answers.

It’s already fully dark, but Keith packs up the hoverbike anyways, tying on enough supplies for a multi-day trip if it comes to that. And then he roars out towards the looming silhouette of the mountain.

_Ten degrees south of the big point,_ he tells himself, checking his compass,_ and southeast by east ‘til morning_. 

*

Shiro wakes up, lurches back into the world, and wishes he hadn’t.

His whole body is sore, faintly burning with nerve pain, and there are other places that sear with the white hot ache of fresh wounds. He can’t move, he realizes, he’s being held down. He opens his eyes to more of that horrible purple light, some kind of lab equipment blurring into sight. He’s dizzy, his heart starting to beat frantically, his insides _heaving_—

He hears urgent voices, someone barking orders that he can’t parse as he pulls and _pulls_ against whatever is holding him down until something suddenly gives on his right with a metallic clatter and he can roll away in time to vomit over the edge of—a table, he’s on some kind of table. He heaves some more, smells and hears something foul splash somewhere below him.

He coughs and gasps until there’s nothing left, hisses pained breaths between his teeth. It feels like his back has been torn open all over again. His head is throbbing so badly that everything seems to dim and brighten in time with his pulse. He might even slip into unconsciousness for a moment or two, but then his mouth is filling with wet cloth and someone is roughly wiping his face. He recognizes Galra cursing above him, and someone is wrenching his right arm back down, restraining it again.

“Get out of the way,” someone orders, and a pale purple face looms over him, staring down at him over some kind of surgical mask. “_Champion_,” it says in a cold male voice, somewhere between dispassionate and sneering. “It seems you’re worthy of one of the Druid’s gifts, even if you are… _sickly_. The graft took well enough, for a damaged specimen of an inferior species. I haven’t worked on your kind before. Didn’t think your weak physiology could take the procedure. I have rarely been so surprised.”

Shiro can barely keep his eyes open, the words washing over him in the background against the agony coursing through him. A huge, rough, clawed hand grips his face, turns him so he has no choice but to look right into the face of the Galra above him.

“_Pay attention_, slave,” he hisses. “You have been bestowed with a weapon of the Galra. Use it wisely, or it will be salvaged from your corpse.”

Shiro hears—he feels—a hollow tapping, looks down himself to see the gleam of… of… his right arm.

_Metal_.

One of the Galra’s claws is tapping against the forearm and he can _feel_ the dull point of sensation, _feel_ the weight of the thing pulling where it almost meets his shoulder. He doesn’t realize he’s hyperventilating until the sound of his frantic breathing is too loud. His vision blurs, his ears are ringing, and someone is shouting something, over and over again—

_What did you do to me, what did you do_—

He’s only dully aware of his own mouth forming the sounds, and then there’s a pinching pain in his neck, and he’s going under. The last thing he hears is the Galra speaking.

“You may yet survive, if you use it well.”

Shiro doesn’t know if he imagined the flicker of pity in those yellow eyes.

*

The second time Keith trips over the same half-exposed lip of bedrock, a terrible doubt flits into his mind. Once it does, it lodges there, stuck like a thorn while he tries to retrace his steps through the maze of clefts and cave openings.

_This compass must be broken_, he thinks, staring down at the unsteady wobbling of the needle, _something must be wrong with it_.

Shit. Maybe he’s lost, actually fucking _lost_— 

He’d been following the compass so intently—eyes glued to it like an idiot—instead of tracking any landmarks or watching where his feet were going. Despite all his wilderness survival training, despite the fact that he’d grown up playing on the edges of this place, the knowledge rolls over him that he doesn’t actually know where he is.

_This can’t be it_, he thinks, _it fucking can’t._

This can’t be what this all comes to, just a knot of blunders at the end of everything, just when it seemed like it was all coming together. 

He turns in desperate circles, frustration quickly bubbling over into outburst.

He kicks at rocks and yells at nothing. He curses the sweat in his eyes and the sun only just risen and already too hot. He curses the sky and the stars and the whole spinning universe. Most of all, he curses the frail little needle that’s veering and spinning in exactly the way it isn’t supposed to, curses himself for blindly relying on it.

He thinks about smashing the thing against the rock face rising beside him, wants the satisfaction of hearing it shatter. His hand is already raised, clenched around it, poised to throw it down—

_Patience._

He hears it in Shiro’s voice, in his mind’s eye.

_Patience yields focus_.

It comes back to him, all those memories of all those times he’d heard those words in that even, gentle tone. The familiar pain of missing him cuts through Keith’s anger like a knife through a sail, spilling all the wind out of it and leaving him empty, dangling. He stares down at the compass, barely seeing it. He counts his breaths in and out until his head clears, just like he’s had to keep doing since he left the Garrison. Just like Shiro taught him. And if he sniffles once or twice and has to wipe his eyes, then that’s between him and the rocks.

If he really is lost, he’d better start figuring out what to do about it. First things first, find higher ground. He turns in circles again, but slowly this time, actually taking in what’s around him—

That’s when his eye is caught by the petroglyph.

Etched so faintly into the rock that only the oblique light can show its contours, the shape is—unmistakably—a lion.

_A lion._

What the hell is a lion doing out here?

It rises above him, time-worn and half invisible, stretching across the smooth rock, bounding as if in flight. _A flying lion_. The effect is arresting. Majestic. It looks old, older than Keith can even guess, and—_Powerful_.

_This_, something rising up inside tells him, a swell of dizzy certainty. _This_.

His instincts are clamouring and tranquil, all at once, riled and sated simultaneously. He looks from the compass still clenched in his hand—the needle still wavering—up at the lines carved into the stone. And he _knows_.

His compass isn’t broken. Not at all.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms and Saints by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> Shiro's side of this chapter was dark to write. Quite aside from the bodily harm (forced combat, various injuries, a crossbow bolt through the damn palm) and physical trauma and violation (no consent for amputation or the prosthetic, partially ineffective anesthetic), there's the psychological toll of Shiro's captivity. Anxiety, panic attacks, despair, dissociation, claustrophobia, isolation, and flashbacks, to start. I tried to be as accurate as possible when considering what he's been through without being gratuitous, but holy hell his experiences in this part of the story are grim. 
> 
> The next chapter isn't going to be sunshine and roses for Shiro either, but without spoiling too much I can tell you he does gain some agency soon and therefore some hope. I promise it's not going to be this awful for long!
> 
> On a much lighter note, this is the chapter where I finally answered the burning question that's been on all of our minds since the very first episode of the show: Considering the sheer ridiculous BEEF of Takashi Shirogane's arms--considering those magnificent guns--how many push ups could he do, like, in one set? Without stopping? My expert source (who also has arms of 100% beef) confirmed that doing sets daily can get you up to 100 faster than you might think. 
> 
> And amateur astronomy is fun, kids! There's lots of good youtube videos out there if you want to learn more about how to find constellations using the spherical coordinate systems and hand measurements I mentioned. 
> 
> I really love the idea that Keith's dad is the reason he got interested in space in the first place.
> 
> ...and also the reason that Keith has explosives. Yeah.


	10. Alteration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the world went crazy? Hope y'all are staying safe. 
> 
> Thanks for being patient! Here's the next part of this thing, continuing the Descriptions of Captivity and shades of the Body Horror tags. Keith is also keeping himself busy. 
> 
> Ginormous thanks to the lovely Sarah, who is the best beta a writer could ask for. HUGS <3

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**10: Alteration**

_I don’t know how I don’t just stand outside and scream  
_ _I am teaching myself how to be free_   
  


*

Shiro hates how much the metal arm feels like his own.

He hates how simple and natural it is to move it without thinking, like it’s a part of him. Like it’s always been a part of him. He hates how strong and steady it is, the way it doesn’t prickle with pain, not like his left. His new right hand doesn’t shake, doesn’t go weak and numb, not like his old. It doesn’t seize like it used to, even when the guards shock him and then shock him again.

They don’t let him bathe that often, so it’s rare to look down at his own body, at what this place has carved into him. Maybe that’s a mercy because the first time they let him wash afterward, he feels a sickening lurch of wrongness when he catches sight of where the metal is attached to him. The join is smooth, unscarred. He can barely look at the place where his skin stops and the machinery begins. 

_One of the Druid’s gifts_.

The Galra guards keep complimenting him on its workmanship, on its fineness. They pause in their rounds to admire it, a jarring thread of civility in their tone. They act like the thing is a reward, a privilege. Like his horror is just a lack of proper gratitude.

It makes him want to stuff the fine metal fist into their mouths to make them shut up.

He knows that knocking their teeth out with it would only please them. It would bring him no release, no satisfaction, because the Galra prize brute strength above all else. Using the metal arm in a fit of spite would only make him more like them, and that thought makes him burn with loathing, deep in his gut.

It’s hard to resist, that sharp edge of hate. It’s so hard not to let it poison him.

He feels as if he’s swallowed a piece of the Galra, toxic and barbed. It’s worming its way inside him, making him resemble them, making him _theirs_. He’s afraid of what he doesn’t know about the arm, what they’ve built into him. He’s afraid that he’s going to remember everything about how they gave it to him, that the flickers that come to him in nightmares will stitch themselves together into a more awful whole.

He tries to exhaust himself before sleep by training in his own cell, for whatever good it does. He tries not to dream. It doesn’t work, of course, and he wakes up gasping, thrashing, wondering why the metal hand isn’t closing around his own throat, choking him.

He wonders when it will betray him.

*

Just like his dad’s notes told him he would, Keith keeps finding more and more petroglyphs. Most of all, he keeps finding more and more lions.

The styles vary, and so does the medium, but where the pigment hasn’t faded over the ages, they’re all blue. Ocean blue. Deep sky blue. The curve of the horizon from high atmosphere blue. 

Some are carved, some are painted, some even look burnt into the stone. Some are abstracted, the form loosely rendered, suggesting but not actually depicting the details. Some are so carefully rendered with all the details intact that they seem more like schematics than art.

Whatever kind of lion it’s representing, it doesn’t look like any lion he’s ever seen before.

Keith takes pictures of every one he finds and carefully notes their locations and characteristics. He gets the photos printed so he can put them up on his ratty, salvaged corkboard. He hopes that staring at them will suddenly make him realize what they mean, why he knows that they mean _something_.

He dares to go to the library every so often, and he looks up the art styles of the indigenous people from the area. Some of the lions look like they were done in the native style. Probably. He’s the farthest thing from an artist, but on the other hand he can tell that some of them—the ones that seem the oldest—are not like the native style at all.

Asking the librarians about the caves and the petroglyphs—and about how modular EMR readers work, about the local topography, about the Garrison’s legal jurisdiction, about how to measure magnetic fields, about real ice-age lions in this part of the world, even about the best way to treat re-occurring sunburn—it’s the only time he talks to other people, really has an actual conversation. He figures the one-word replies he gives at shops when he buys supplies don’t count. He tries to remember the last time he really looked someone full in the eye and comes up blank. 

It might be sheer paranoia, Keith knows, but he’s still cautious about being in town too often. It’s been months, but he still half expects Garrison security to come around the corner and—What, arrest him? Charge him with all the crimes Iverson had waved under his nose? He’s not afraid of that. At least, not only that. He’s way more worried that they’d take the hoverbike back than anything. The possibility drops dread into his stomach like ice whenever the thought crosses his mind.

It’s the only piece of Shiro he has left, and besides that if he can’t keep going into the desert—

If he didn’t have that excuse to stay in motion, to keep looking for _more_—

He doesn’t know what else he would do. He knows that from the outside, from any reasonable, normal perspective, this has teetered over the edge into real obsession, even compulsion. But he _knows it means something_. He knows it _matters_. He’s not giving that up for anything.

*

_You have been bestowed with a weapon of the Galra_.

It isn’t until Shiro’s thrown back into the arena that he realizes the full meaning of those words. Unlike his own failing left hand of flesh and blood, his right really is a weapon, a thing of violence. The fact that it gives him serious advantages in combat is a bitter thing to swallow, but he can’t afford not to.

He realizes quickly that no ordinary weapon can even scratch it, that he can use it as a shield. It can absorb blow after blow with no damage to itself. He can knock blades out of the way with his palm, can even deflect plasma. It gives him tactile feedback—he can feel some of the texture and details of everything he touches— but burning heat and icy cold don’t penetrate the skin of it. Electricity passes right through it without any affect on its functioning, even if it leaves the rest of him buckled and aching.

As a blunt instrument, it’s exemplary. But of course, he should have known. It’s far more than that.

It’s not conscious, the first time he activates his right hand fully, a half-formed lurch of instinct igniting it into searing hot light.

It happens because he thinks he’s going to die—the hybrid monster he’s fighting has a tentacle as thick as his thigh wrapped around his neck, crushing his airway, with every other weapon out of reach—and the sudden burning in his right hand is background compared to the agony of his lungs trying to draw breath. He expects to keep beating against the thick greenish flesh, hopes only to make the beast loosen its grip. Just long enough for him to gasp in another breath, just enough air to live another minute—

Instead, he gets a face full of steaming ichor when his white-hot hand slices clean through the limb and sends the thing into retreat, shrieking. At first he’s too busy heaving air back into his lungs and spitting its blood out of his mouth to realize he’s won the fight, to realize his right hand is still scorching the steel beneath him. He doesn’t hear the crowd, roaring with approval. 

After that, activating his hand is something he learns to do on command only by painful trial and error. It _burns_ him, every time, all the way along his nerves up into his _mind_, but he has no choice but to get used to it. He gets better and better at wielding it, almost despite himself.

Even the most zealous gladiators start to flinch away from its white-purple blaze, and he can _force_ mercy on his opponents more often with its heat-hazed edge than he ever could without it.

In the arena, he remains undefeated.

He gets fewer and fewer scars, and gives more and more back.

*

You can get used to anything, and Keith supposes he should know this better than most.

When the petroglyphs start to stain images of lions into the backs of his eyes even into sleep, he doesn’t think much of it. When he keeps dreaming about something under the earth, something awakening, something coming from the sky, it doesn’t bother him as much as he knows it should.

The strange pull out into the hot wilderness—to the caves and all those petroglyphs—not for a second does Keith actually trust it, but these days, the creeping oddity of it all has worn off. It doesn’t stand out to Keith as something that doesn’t belong. Instead, it _fits in_. It’s just a piece of whatever’s going on out here, some refracted aspect of this bigger… _thing_… that he and his dad both, somehow, caught a glimpse of. Got snagged by.

That’s the part that he knows is keeping him sane in the midst of all this crazy, keeps him from being afraid for himself.

He knows it’s all real—seriously, _observably_ real—because he isn’t the first person to realize that it’s out there, to see tangible signs of its effects on the area around it, to brush up against it and wonder what it is. His dad’s documents and the lions painted on the rocks both prove that. 

It even makes him feel closer to his dad to retrace the same notes and try to match up observations. Finding the telescope on his birthday had felt like a gift, and using it the way his dad used to feels like continuing a tradition, like remembrance. He still hasn’t gone back to the cemetery, but somehow all this feels like almost the same thing. 

So in his waking life, Keith goes out into his dad’s ‘Neverland’, burning with curiosity, holding that sense of connection in his heart like a torch. Every day, he catalogues the glyphs, writes his observations and speculations, fills page after page in his notebook. Every day, he carefully compares his own observations to what’s in his dad’s sparse notes, trying to unravel the knot left behind, trying to walk in his dad’s footsteps.

If swallowing this whole unbelievable situation means that he gets to feel like his dad is still by him somehow, in this one small way, then he’ll take it.

God, he’ll take it. 

*

Shiro fights, and he wins, and he lives. He watches, and he waits.

He keeps surviving, and the pall of adrenalin he’d been living under starts to ease. He can really think again, he can _plan_, and once he starts, things fold open in his mind. Observations he’d made numbly while afraid and frantic come together with new meaning.

The first salient fact is that the robotic sentries make their patrols in a repeating pattern. It’s complex and well designed not to allow for gaps of more than a few seconds, but it is predictable. If he could just remember the rhythm of it…

The second salient fact is that there are a lot of prisoners like Shiro on this ship, destined for the arena. _A lot_. Maybe even as many as a thousand, and the thought makes him ill as much as it makes him consider new angles.

The volume of captured people forced into the pit must be tremendous. All those prisoners, they’re being herded by fear, mostly, managed by isolation and intimidation as much as by the number of guards, but if even a fraction of them were to act together somehow…

Not only that, but the arena isn’t merely to kill off prisoners. It’s also an instrument of indoctrination, of calculated spectacle and propaganda. He starts to understand how the Galra conquer by assimilation as much as they conquer by destruction. Any fighter of any species who shows enough skill and ruthlessness—shows how Galra they’ve become—can earn respect and even freedom.

No, not freedom exactly. They can earn promotion into the Galra ranks, which isn’t the same thing, but Shiro can imagine how it might look that way if you’ve been fighting in the arena for long enough. He wonders how many go _up_ because they can’t get _out_, knowing that there are some Champions who became favoured soldiers.

Some of the guards even start to look up to Shiro as their favourite fighter, just like cadets and junior officers at the Garrison used to look up to his sim scores. It’s seriously surreal, half funny and half sickening, but it runs deeper than that. They start to call him _gladiator_ more often than they call him _prisoner_, and it means they think he’s coming around to their way of life, that they think he’s _buying into_ all this.

Climbing the ladder, one bloody rung at a time.

Just by trying to stay alive, Shiro realizes that he’d been competing in their game without knowing—a thought that makes him disgusted with himself—but if he can stay patient and play the role just long enough…

And most important of all, Shiro realizes that no one—not the guards, not the medical butchers who gave it to him—can control the metal arm remotely.

He’d even tested this, risked a lot to know for sure. He’d threatened a higher ranking guard supervisor with it, brandishing the sizzling edge of his hand under her chin. The other guards had shocked him to bring him to heel, but it had proved his hunch that the Galra can’t just deactivate it if he doesn’t want them to.

The arm is, for better or worse, under his control.

_A gift_, they’d called it.

Shiro still hates it, feels sick and angry when he remembers how it came to be attached to him, but if the arm will help him survive this hell, then he’s willing—grudgingly—to think of it as a tool as well as a curse.

He just needs to stay patient, and stay focused. 

*

Since he’d found the equipment his dad had left behind sealed up in plastic under the porch, Keith has spent a lot of time pouring over the electronics manuals he’d downloaded and printed at the library, figuring out how to get it all working.

Getting it to turn on, then getting all the modules properly connected to each other, then learning how in the hell to get the output into the right forms—It takes weeks, but in between his forays into the desert, Keith has nothing but time. 

Some of it is scanning equipment for recording energy measurements—a generalized EMR reader, basically, though Keith can’t fathom how to really use half the sensors it takes input for—but the rest is for signal intercept. If he were better with computers, he could use it to skim actual data from networks in the area, but he’s much more interested in its most basic function as a good old fashioned radio receiver. 

It’s like striking gold when he figures out that he can use one of the modules to overhear the Garrison’s wireless chatter, the sheer good fortune of it so sudden it feels unreal.

It’s not merely luck, Keith knows, not happenstance at all. He doesn’t know what to do with the fact that his dad clearly intended the whole set up for just this purpose, but being able to listen for security patrols when he needs to go anywhere near Garrison grounds is too useful to dismiss.

He even gets in the habit of listening to it most evenings, leaving the door open as he sits on the steps and watches the sunsets. The sporadic chatter of human voices filling the mostly empty house is… soothing.

At first he just listens to the security staff going about their business. Gate checks for people going in and out, perimeter reports, night time rounds in the dorms and other facilities. Cadets getting caught after curfew, officers getting stopped at clearance checkpoints, the occasional stray dog getting into the garbage bins, that kind of thing.

Then he figures out how to tune in to other, more secure channels.

He really doesn’t think he should be able to do that. He wonders how much money his dad spent on this equipment… and whether buying it was strictly legal. It doesn’t stop him from using it, though, his curiosity too strong to even twinge his conscience.

He can eavesdrop on security teams accompanying higher ranked personnel on inspections. He can listen in to the radar techs in the sky-lab as they track objects in the atmosphere or beyond it. He can’t hear the closed channels between actual aircraft, but he can tune in to ground crews coordinating with Flight Ops. He can hear air deliveries getting called in for landing later at night and even fighter scrambles for training exercises early in the morning. He recognizes a few of the call signs, pilots he’d known by reputation or by degrees of separation from Shiro. 

By chance he even catches an entire shuttle launch, sound only from first checks to full lift off.

It’s a mission to the inner rocky planets, a loop of Venus and a touch-down on the dark side of Mercury while their orbital positions happen to be especially close. He’d read about it in the news, though he hadn’t taken in many details. It’s the first big manned mission since Kerberos failed and Keith hadn’t had the stomach for all the inevitable comparisons and doomsaying. 

Keith barely moves as he listens for almost three hours, held rapt on the couch, unable to help seeing it all in his mind’s eye as if he’s strapped in himself, ready to leave the ground behind. In the end, he’s overcome with a sudden heart-twist of longing and he can’t stand to only listen. Instead, he dashes out of the house as the shuttle finally breaks out of the atmosphere, looking out to the north to see the rising streak of it disappearing into the sky. 

After that, he leaves the receiver on almost every moment that he’s in the house.

*

Shiro had known it would happen at some point—the logical progression of his rise, of his half-intended playacting at being the ambitious ‘Champion’—but it still guts him when they throw him into the arena against a fellow prisoner. 

It’s supposed to be easy pickings, he realizes, not a battle but an execution. A test of his brutality—his allegiance—not his skill. He’s finally out of time, out of angles, out of options.

He stares across the arena at his single, small opponent while the crowd laughs and jeers, eager for the blood to start spilling.

The other prisoner is fleshy and short limbed, kind of chubby and knobbly in a way that would remind him of brightly coloured sea slugs except they’re covered entirely in sunshine yellow fur. They’re clearly determined and terrified at the same time, their small mouth trembling with fear while they clumsily brandish a Galra dagger, and the sight of it makes pity and rage swell in his chest in equal proportion.

_Fuck this_, he thinks. _I’m not doing this_.

He has to get this poor thing out of here. He doesn’t care if it forces his hand, forces him to bare his true colours. He’ll eat whatever consequences come of this.

The alien tries to attack him when he gets closer, but Shiro just grabs the blade with his metal hand and takes it from them. He grips their shirt with his flesh arm, tries to keep the Galra hand away from them, tries to stay non-threatening as he pushes them back against a pillar, the only semblance of privacy the two of them are going to get. They claw at him desperately, misunderstanding, unsheathing talons from their little paws that had been hidden before.

“Ow! Stop it!” Shiro drops the dagger altogether and switches to his Galra hand after all. “I _don’t_ want to hurt you,” he hisses as loud as he dares, and they freeze. “Good, you can understand me. Look, you have to work with me here. I can get them to spare you for now.”

They stare at him, perplexed, still feebly pawing at his arm, talons scraping uselessly against the metal.

“But you’re the Champion, you’re one of them!”

“No, I’m not.”

They flick their eyes to his Galra hand in answer, their utter distrust perfectly clear, and Shiro feels himself lose his patience so completely that he actually growls out loud, a snarl of inarticulate anger.

God, he used to be good at this, getting people to trust him.

“_Believe me or don’t_,” he snaps, right into their face, “I don’t care. But I’m going to get us both out of this. Now, either you help me, or I knock you unconscious and I do all the work myself. Okay?”

They cower, and the stubby little tendrils around their face give a trembling wave.

“What does that mean?” he barks. “Does that mean yes?”

“Yes! It means yes!”

“Good.”

“What—what do I do?”

“Tell the others that I’ll help when I can, but you have to keep yourselves alive.” He feels himself give a nasty, curled imitation of a smile. “And act scared,” he says as an afterthought.

He activates his hand and punches it into the wall right by their ear, the metal there sparking and sizzling until it gives way, liquifying. His opponent flinches away from the heat and whimpers loudly, and Shiro doesn’t care if they’re acting or not. He turns to the crowd, who have started grumbling in confusion and discontent. 

“Are you joking?” he roars, flicking red-hot metal off his fingers. “Don’t insult me!”

He holds open his hands, glares around the arena.

“The mighty Galra!” he sneers. “Send your own! Don’t waste my time!” 

He snatches up the dagger from the ground, spins and lobs it high over the crowd, hears it _clink_ somewhere up above him, somewhere in the balconies for guests of honour.

The crowd drops into silence so absolute and so sudden that its like an airlock has been opened, like all the air has been pulled out of the arena. He hadn’t noticed anything different about the crowd, had only been paying attention to his opponent. He realizes, suddenly, that the stands are absolutely packed, all the way to the top. He realizes that the ornate balcony above all the others is full, and that for the first time its grand dais and its huge throne are occupied.

He realizes that he’s thrown a weapon directly at the Emperor of the Galra.

The lean, hooded, hunched shape at the Emperor’s side has flinched into an aggressive stance, has raised its hands as if to retaliate, even from so far away—

But then the Emperor stands. Thousands of fists thump against armour as the entire crowd salutes him, the sound of their obeisance crashing over him like a wave. Lord Zarkon looks down on him—for what Shiro realizes is the second time—and that gaze landing on him is a fist gripping his spine.

This Galra is _huge_, massive in his royal armour. Monstrous. _Powerful_.

There’s something wrong about the light in the Emperor’s eyes, even from here. Something unnatural. Deep at the back of his mind, deep in his gut, the animal part of Shiro cowers as fear—real, visceral _fear_—surges through him.

_Dangerous_, his instincts scream at him, _this one is fucking dangerous_.

Then Zarkon starts to laugh. Shiro shivers.

“_Champion_,” the Emperor says in amusement, his voice a slashed open growl. He spreads his hands in a gesture of contempt, or beneficence, or both. “I commend your audacity,” he says, “but not your insolence.”

Eyes locked on this… _thing_, this _beast_, Shiro doesn’t even hear the guards surrounding him. They shock him to his knees, beat him to the ground, and drag him out, Zarkon’s laughter still ringing loud and cold. 

*

The radio chatter is different tonight.

“—_got a problem here, just found gate six open_—”

“—_footage shows movement on the east side of the building_—”

Keith thinks it’s another loose animal that’s gotten through the fences and come too close to the facilities. It happens sometimes. He turns up the volume, hoping to be entertained by security getting run around in circles by some rabbit or deer.

But then—

“—_the cameras have gone down on this side, I can’t see_—”

“—_can’t get surveillance back up, someone’s messed with the wiring_—"

“—_we’ve got an intruder, I repeat, there’s an intruder on the second floor_—”

“—_security to staff offices immediately, we need eyes on the area_—”

“—_the Commander’s system is being accessed, call Iverson and get him down here_—”

“—_can’t lock them out remotely, they’re downloading the secure Kerberos files_—”

Holy _shit_.

Someone is breaking into Iverson’s office to get access to his computer. Someone else is looking for information about Kerberos.

Keith listens, not daring to breathe, as—whoever it is—is caught only minutes later. He can only catch snippets of whatever is happening in that room, bursts of voices in the background as the security officers report that _the intruder has been apprehended_.

He hears Iverson’s voice, loud and angry.

“—_escort miss Holt off the premises_—”

Holt.

The little sister. Sam Holt had a younger daughter, Keith remembers.

And he hears someone else, shouting back—

“—_can’t keep me out! I’ll find the truth! I’ll never—_”

The voice is younger and higher than he thought it would be. A kid? Could it really be some kid who got through all that security?

_I’m not the only one_.

That’s all he can think about as the radio chatter eventually dies down, goes back to intermittent check-ins and all-clears.

He’s not the only one who’s trying to find out the truth, and that fact is both a comfort and a sliver. He itches to try to find this kid, find out what she learned tonight. He yearns to have another person on his side—somebody, _anybody_—but when he tries to think through the how of it, he comes up short.

He imagines showing up on the Holt doorstep, interrupting a family in their grief to explain to them that he lives like a squatter on the edge of the desert in his dad’s abandoned house and that he’s inherited illegal radio equipment that he’s been using to eavesdrop on the Garrison. He imagines looking Holt’s widow in the face and saying… saying _what_, exactly?

_You don’t know me, but I really admire the way your daughter broke into Iverson’s office, can I speak to her?_

_The Garrison is covering something up about the way your son and husband died, you should invite me in so we can sit down and talk about it?_

No. That’s not going to happen.

There’s nothing he can do but _know_, and he’s just going to have to live with that. 

*

Back in his cell, when the effects of the prods have worn off but before the heat of his new bruises has faded, Shiro rubs at his prickling left hand, feeling his thoughts twist, fixating on one thing.

_Zarkon_.

The name rings through him, makes him angrier and more afraid than he’s been for a long time in this place. He regrets ever seeing the light in those eyes.

_Lord Zarkon has ruled the Galra for ten thousand years_, Shiro has heard them say. _He cannot be killed. He ripped himself back from death and will rule forever._

He wishes he still believed that was impossible.

Shiro knows its hate he’s feeling, hate for what Zarkon has built, for this empire, for this grinding machine of a civilization that takes in lives and spits out suffering. Every Galra face seems to have Zarkon’s beneath it, now. _Complicit_, he thinks, disgusted.

He feels eyes on him.

The Galra who gave him his arm is simply standing there, staring at him through the bars of the door, face free of his surgical mask but still unreadable.

“What you did,” the Galra says, tone flat, “was very stupid. Such things do not go unpunished.”

A pang of equal dread and annoyance flares at the words, and Shiro snorts. “Sounds like I have a lot to look forward to, then.”

He knows he wouldn’t have chosen differently.

“Dying in the arena is a waste,” the Galra says, stepping closer to the bars. For the first time, Shiro senses some strain in his voice, some subtle urgency he’s trying to convey. “It is all that Lord Zarkon desires. For those within the Empire who stand against him to ruin themselves.”

_Those within the Empire_.

“…There are people fighting back? From inside?” He tries not to let his voice give him away, tries not to sit too far forward, but he knows he’s failing to hide his reaction, the way his pulse has accelerated. 

It’s like a spark to pure oxygen, his heart bursting suddenly with a surge of _hope_—

_Why is he telling me this?_

Maybe this is some kind of trap, maybe—

But no, something is going on here, some other layer is at work beneath the surface of the words. Shiro can _feel_ it, and that instinct is only confirmed when the Galra comes even closer, his forehead almost pressing to the bars as he stoops to meet Shiro more eye to eye.

“There are some who foolishly resist,” he says, his syllables heavy with significance. “Small factions who don’t believe in Zarkon’s vision of glory. Slaves are not told that the Galra have not always been so great. We were not always conquerors. There are some who believe we must return to something like that time. Heal the wound in our history, they say—”

_Heal the wound in our history_.

Footsteps approach, the _clang clang_ of a squadron of guards walking in tandem down some nearby corridor on their rounds, and the Galra surgeon stiffens, subtly, stands straighter, rigid in a way that Shiro realizes he hadn’t been before. 

“—but true Galra revile this weakness,” he says, louder and haughtier than before. “We have been content, in our victories. We have won many spoils…”

The footsteps fade, never coming into sight, and the Galra tilts one pointed ear in that direction, listens intently for a long, silent moment. Then, satisfied that the guards are gone, he leans forward again.

“Spies and rebels are secretly among even our own kind,” he continues, more quietly. “Zarkon does not tolerate dissent, and hasn’t for long ages. Any who aberrate are found out by Haggar’s magics and—”

“Haggar?” Shiro interrupts. “Who’s Haggar?”

“Lord Zarkon’s sorceress, the highest Druid. She has mastered dark sciences, far beyond the rest of them. She even has powers over life and consciousness. More than that is not known.”

Shiro remembers the robed figure by Zarkon’s side, defensive and poised. And he remembers feeling like his mind was being _peeled_, his memories and thoughts syphoned off by force. He shudders.

“And if the Druids suspect something?”

“They will know all, if they catch their prey. Rebels are hunted down, and then they are… _opened_, and then they are destroyed.”

The Galra meets his eyes, stares at him hard.

“Do you understand?” he says.

Shiro thinks he’s starting to. _Complicit_, he’d thought, but he must have been wrong. Completely wrong. His mind spins at the implications, the knot of hate in his chest winding out with it, loosening. New and desperate possibilities spool out along with it, flashing through him, gripping him hard. 

“But there are _so many_ prisoners here. What if—what if we resist openly? What if _all of us_ fight back?”

The Galra’s face wrinkles in a sneer.

“Then you are meat,” he says, voice returning to its usual flattened contempt. “All such open rebellions have perished, and all will. You will all die by blood. A waste.”

“I hear you,” Shiro says, sobered. “I do. Thanks for the… lesson.”

The Galra stays where he is, seeming expectant. He’s giving Shiro a moment to consider, he realizes, but from the way one ear is still cocked towards the corridor, it’s clear that he won’t wait for long.

Shiro knows he’s being offered something here, something important. It might be his only chance, but his only chance to _what?_ There are serious stakes, here. It’s clear that this Galra has risked something to be here speaking to him, that he’s gambling something on him and on his answer, but he doesn’t know what that _means_, what question he would even be answering, exactly. He doesn’t know what he’d be wagering, doesn’t know the price.

The long-desperate need for some kind of ally—_any_ kind of ally, _anybody_ on his side—flares up in him, warring with the icy certainty that there is no world in which he should actually trust this stranger, this Galra _butcher_— 

_Heal the wound_, he’d said, though. A butcher wouldn’t talk like that.

He wonders what this Galra would have been, in a different life. Maybe if the terror of the Druids had never hung over him, maybe if the Empire had been less malignant, he could have been something like a doctor, a true healer. In his mind, Shiro multiplies his own suffering, wonders how many limbs this Galra has had to steal, how many bodies he’s had to break, how much blood he’s had to wash from his hands in order to survive as a spy. 

Of all things, Shiro thinks of that stubby little yellow alien and the way the dagger had wavered in their grip. He thinks of the abject fear in their eyes, the way they’d said_ you’re one of them_. He thinks about where the line is, what choice would mean he could live with himself, for however long he has left to live.

He wants to find his crew, wants so desperately to go home—and he wants to see this carnivorous Empire toppled to pieces, wants to see Zarkon _on his fucking knees_ for his atrocities—but right now, there’s something right in front of him that’s more important. It’s been in front of him the whole time.

_I’ll help when I can_, he’d said. It’s about time he made good on that promise.

He can’t match the Galra’s double speak, so he won’t even try. If doesn’t matter if he’s overheard.

“What’s your name?” he asks, and the Galra looks startled by the question, wary. Shiro puts up his hands, open, a silent signal that he means no harm by it. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. My name is Shiro.”

“Shiro,” the Galra repeats, like he’s trying to remember it. He bows his head slightly in acknowledgment. “I am called Ulaz.”

“Hajimemashite,” Shiro says quietly, returning the bow. He doubts the Galra will understand it, but he hopes the respect he means by it is clear. “It’s nice to meet you, Ulaz. You helped me understand, so thank you. I mean that. But I’d rather be meat with the others.” 

“You would die in the arena?” Ulaz says.

“Yeah,” Shiro answers, feeling the conviction of it solid and cool in his chest. “I would.”

He’d felt so helpless for so long, but he isn’t helpless anymore.

A hard certainty has risen up in him, that old knot of mortal fear crushed by the pressures of rage and pain into something unyielding, clear and sharp as glass. There are people here who need protection, and he _knows_, suddenly, that he won’t deserve to stay alive if it means forsaking them.

He’s not going to think only of his own survival anymore. He will not abide.

“You said it would be a waste,” Shiro says, “but I don’t believe that. There are a lot of different ways to die. I’d rather die fighting.”

Those yellow eyes stare into him for a moment more. At first Shiro thinks he sees shades of incredulity in that pointed face, but Ulaz’s expression flickers into something else, a kind of grim appraisal.

Then he nods and walks away without another word.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> Shiro: ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??  
Zarkon: haha no
> 
> ‘Hajimemashite’ (lit. ‘it is the first time’) is the Japanese equivalent of ‘it’s nice to meet you’ or ‘how do you do?’ when introducing yourself. Shiro uses it with Ulaz because he is a polite boy who remembers the manners his parents taught him. 
> 
> It’s such a relief to finally be able to let these boys get a leg up on all the shit that’s been dumped on them. They’re not together again yet, but they’re getting there. 
> 
> It was interesting for me to think about how the Galra function as an empire with cultural institutions and a perspective of its own, whatever Shiro (and we) may think of their values. I know it’s a cliché that Evil Empire = Roman Empire, but thinking about the Galra in roughly Roman terms really does help me understand the psychology of the Galra as a people rather than just as generic Bad Guys. 
> 
> Big thank you to librarians everywhere for fielding all the most random questions and being there for everyone who needs information. They are a huge resource, especially for those folks on the fringes. 
> 
> And hey, did y’all know that lions were all over the place in the Americas during the most recent ice ages? Did y’all know that the American Lion (Panthera leo atrox) was one of the biggest felines we’ve ever found? What a magnificent chonk kitty. 
> 
> Also, how bad must burnt monster blood taste? I wrote that part and now I can’t get the theoretical taste out of my mouth. Eww.


	11. Conflux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being patient, y'all! Quite aside from life being rather upside down right now, I needed some time to plan out the sections that come after this one. To make up for the wait, I hope this chapter is sufficiently juicy and delicious :D 
> 
> Super huge and effusive thanks for my beta Sarah, who is capital 'A' Awesome <3
> 
> Stay safe out there!

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**11: Conflux**

_When you see yourself in a crowded room  
Do your fingers itch? Are you pistol-whipped?  
Will you step in line or release the glitch?  
  
_

*

The two guards on either side of him tell him he’s going in against four Galra gladiators, nothing but his hand as a weapon. When they both smirk at him, wide and wicked, Shiro realizes that Ulaz was right.

This must be his punishment.

The crowd seems bigger—louder, _hungrier_—than his usual fights. Maybe word of his defiant stunt spread and now they all want to see him pay for it. Shiro spares a glance up at the royal balcony, but the dais and the throne are empty. Zarkon and his druid Haggar haven’t bothered to witness this. That could be a good sign or a very bad sign, and he won’t have much time to wonder which.

The landscape of the arena is different this time, changed to make it more like a tactical skirmish, a four-on-one hunt. Dozens of pillars only as wide as his shoulders have been arranged in the middle ground between the two great doors on either end of the pit, almost like a broad stand of trees.

At least it’s some kind of cover—

A hot blast of plasma hits the wall over his left shoulder, spraying his ear with burning sparks. Cursing, he’s already sprinting towards the nearest pillar as two of the gladiators open fire from their end of the arena, each of them brandishing some kind of energy rifle. He’d seen the long blades in the hands of the other two fighters, and he has no doubt that they’re already stalking him like an animal, moving to surround him.

His disadvantage is more than just the fact that he’s outnumbered, he realizes. He has only the reach of his own arms, while his hunters can gut him or shoot him before he can get close enough to strike.

_Shit_.

He needs to level the odds, and he needs to level them _now_.

Mind racing with calculations of angles and lines of sight, he can only pray his geometry is right before he throws himself into motion, bolting from pillar to pillar, burning right hand at the ready.

He rarely feels grateful for his lack of armour, but the plain cloth gives him a soft tread that he’s learned is hard to hear over the crowd, and he manages to take one of the bladed gladiators by surprise. He gets a kind of grim satisfaction from not having to kill him, pausing only to help himself to the sword-like weapon before he aims himself at the next vantage point.

Then he gets lucky with a half-wild throw of the sword that he doesn’t have time to really aim. That takes care of the first of the snipers, too. With the blade back in one hand and the rifle hefted in the other, he thinks he might actually get through this.

Of course, he should have known.

His punishment was never going to be straightforward.

Just when he starts to feel like he might have a chance, like he knows how he’s being played with—

That’s when they raise a pen from the ground in the centre of the pillars. It’s something they do with animals—Druid-made monsters—but this time, Shiro sees three other prisoners being pushed up into the centre of the fray instead, immediately exposed. 

Shiro freezes for only half a second, all his previous calculations dropped in an instant. Then he’s running for the centre, towards the other prisoners.

He catches a flash of familiar yellow fur as all three scramble in a panic over the low glass-like walls of the pen to crouch behind it, away from the plasma fire of the other sniper. He slides in beside them, a bolt of plasma narrowly missing his foot. Two of them cry out in fear and try to flee away from him, but the third—the same stubby little alien from his last fight—grabs them both and holds them fast.

“It’s him!” they say, excitedly, “It’s the one I was talking about! He can help us!”

“What, the _Champion?_” one of them squeaks. She’s bird-like and frail, with huge green eyes made even wider by fear.

“You’re crazy…” the other says faintly, looking a little sick. This one is pale and squat, smooth-skinned like a dolphin. 

“I promise you I’m on your side,” Shiro says, eyes darting to the left of their position, looking for the fourth Galra he knows must be approaching fast. He spares a moment to try to smile at them, though he knows it’s tight and maybe not as friendly as he would like. “My name is Shiro.”

“Jyrun,” says the yellow alien. 

“Jurren?” Shiro tries.

“Close enough.” They grin at him in something like relief, the tendrils around their mouth doing that little wave he remembers. “This is Plix, and that’s Raetha.”

Shiro nods at them. “I really wish we could have met under better circumstances. For now, let’s just focus on getting through this, alright?”

More sparks shower over them, and the roar of the crowd gets louder.

“Shiro, what do we _do?_”

“Can you use this?” Shiro pushes the sword at Jyrun, hilt first, but they balk, holding their paws up in refusal.

“Not good with blades,” they say, “but… I can shoot.”

Shiro only hesitates a moment before he hands over the rifle. It looks a bit ridiculous in their short arms, but Shiro remembers the surprising strength in that knobbly, furry little body.

Shiro turns to offer the hilt to the other two, but neither of them reach for it at first. Then another plasma blast slams into the clear walls of the pen, melting it a bit more and showering them with another spray of sparks. The pale alien—Plix—reluctantly takes it in one thick hand. “I don’t know how,” he says, swallowing audibly.

“That’s fine,” Shiro says, reaching to correct Plix’s hold.

The alien only flinches a little when Shiro’s metal fingers gently bring his second hand to grip below the first.

“Just hold on tight,” Shiro explains, “and keep this end close to your body. That’s where your weight is, where your power comes from. The Galra are bigger, but they’re still vulnerable in the middle like the rest of us. Keep your footing solid until they’re close and then thrust the point _up_. Aim for the gaps in the armour. You’re strong, I can tell. You’re going to be alright.”

Plix nods grimly, and Shiro turns to Raetha, the last prisoner, but she’s trembling.

“I, I _can’t_ fight,” she says, voice faint and shaking. “I’m not strong.”

“You don’t have to be,” Shiro says, “Stay low and stay behind cover. This barrier will last long enough for the rest of us to deal with the Galra. Okay?”

She opens her mouth to reply, but then she whips her head around, craning her long neck up to stare at something over the barrier.

“Something moved,” she hisses, “something to the right.”

Shiro waits for a gap in the plasma fire, inches up to look too, but he doesn’t see anything. Just the metal pillars in their rows and the mass of the crowd behind that.

He’d been keeping the paths that the Galra might take between the pillars clear in his mind, tracking them on a kind of mental map. The angle of the sniper’s shots hasn’t changed, and the last bladed Galra shouldn’t have gotten that far around them yet. They _couldn’t_ have moved that fast. Could they?

“You sure?”

“Yes!”

Her intense gaze is still locked on some distant point. He sees the irises of her big green eyes contract in a complex way he’s never seen before. The idea hits him between one breath and the next.

“Hey. You’ve got good vision, don’t you?”

She hums a tremulous, affirmative sound.

“Okay. We’re going to need your help,” he says. “You don’t have to fight. You can stay here. But I need you to call out what you see, okay?”

Shocked, she blinks her focus back to him—a sheer eyelid flicks forward over her eyes—and a look of terror comes over her face.

“_Me?_” she squeaks.

“Yes, _you_,” he says, trying not to let the urgency thrumming through him turn his voice too harsh. “Raetha, we _really_ need you right now. Will you help us?”

Shiro holds out his left hand, a plea he hopes is universal.

She blinks again, and then seems to make up her mind. She lays the back of her own hand gently on his palm, completes the gesture in her own way.

“Yes, Champion,” she says. “I—I’m with you.”

A new wave of adrenalin rushes through him at the tentative trust in her eyes, a thrill of warmth burning along with it. He finds himself smiling gratefully at her—really smiling—and he looks around at Plix and Jyrun to find their resolute faces peering back at him.

Hopeful.

Waiting for his signal.

“Alright,” Shiro says, “let’s do this.”

*

Keith doesn’t know if he somehow got complacent, was somehow incautious, or if he’s just really damn unlucky.

He runs into Adam—literally almost walks into him—as he’s leaving the grocery store with more supplies. It’s a miracle he has the self control not to just drop the whole bag of food in shock, but he turns on his heel so fast that he almost drops it anyways.

Adam had been looking down at his PD. Maybe he hadn’t seen his face, maybe he won’t recognize him—

“Keith? Is that—Hey, wait!”

He’d been ready to sprint around the corner of the building, hide behind the damn dumpster if it came to it, but he stops after two and a half strides. He’s been made, there’s no point.

He turns, squares himself to Adam’s startled expression.

“…Hi,” Keith says, trying not to sound hostile and suspicious. It doesn’t work. 

“I just want to talk,” Adam says, hands out like he’s reassuring some spooked animal.

Keith realizes he must look like one. He can feel his weight already on his heels, ready to bolt. He has to loosen his hands from where they’ve crumpled the old fashioned paper bag, clutched almost defensively against his chest. Keith figures he owes it to the man to at least give him a chance, tries to relax despite the rush of adrenalin, tries to feel less cornered.

“Fine,” Keith says, “we can talk.”

“So you’ve been _here?_” Adam asks, like that’s the most unbelievable thing. “You’ve been in town this whole time?”

“Not… exactly,” Keith says.

“Then where are you living?”

Keith feels his own expression shutter, and Adam has the decency to back off from the question.

“Okay. But are you… doing alright? How are you even getting money?”

Old resentment surfaces at Adam’s baffled tone, that same feeling of being condescended to.

“I’m nineteen,” Keith grits out. “I’m an adult.”

“Technically, yes,” Adam says, then holds his hands up again in surrender when he sees the snarl forming on Keith’s face. “Look, I’m not trying to pick a fight! Just—Are you actually doing okay? Do you have what you need?”

“…I’m fine,” Keith says, trying to reign in his temper. “Why do _you_ care?”

“Look,” Adam starts, “I had a conversation with you—”

Keith can’t help the dark laugh that cracks out of him. “You seriously call _that_ a ‘conversation’?”

“—a disagreement. Fine. But then you _disappeared_, Keith, right out of secure custody.” Adam sighs. “I feel responsible, okay? There was a bulletin out for a while, county-wide. Nobody ever spotted the hoverbike. Nobody could find you.”

_Jesus_. Not just Garrison security, but the fucking _cops_ had been looking for him? Keith takes a step back despite himself.

“You won’t have to worry about it,” Adam adds quickly. “I… may have told them that I overheard you talking about a relative two states over. They never asked me about you again and the bulletin went down three weeks later. I assumed that you wouldn’t want to end up back in the system.” 

Keith blinks at him, a little taken aback.

_Back in the system_.

With the usual pang of anxious resignation, he wonders how much Adam knows about those years he’d spent in foster care before he lived at the Garrison, what Adam thinks of him because of it. He hadn’t even told Shiro half of it, had only made it clear that he never intended to let the state control his life ever again.

Too many kids age out of the foster system only to end up in the judicial system not long after, and all at once Keith understands he’d come closer to that than he’d known. Adam must know that he has no living relatives in the picture, which means Adam straight up _lied to the police_ to keep them off his back.

He’d lied to keep him out of jail.

That’s… not nothing.

“Thanks,” he says, and not for the first time, he finds he means it. “I’m grateful. I really am. But I can take care of myself.”

“Will you at least take this?”

Adam holds out a card. Keith can see Adam’s name and contact info printed neatly under the Garrison’s letterhead. He bristles.

“I _said_ I can—"

“Just in case,” Adam insists. “If you ever need anything.”

Keith stares at him. He doesn’t want that card anywhere near him, but Adam’s face is open and hopeful. This doesn’t feel like a trap. He takes the card quickly, then backs away another four feet just in case. Adam seems relieved, and Keith just wants out of here, but—

“Did you find out any more about what happened? On Kerberos?”

The words are out of his mouth before he knows he’s said them.

There’s been a hunger under his skin for so long, a hunger to _know_, finally, the answers. It surges up in him, filling him almost to the throat. He’s suddenly starving for information, realizes he’d only tamped down on that desperate need to know, had merely channeled it into documenting the glyphs and exploring the caves and deciphering his dad’s notebooks. It hadn’t gone anywhere, hadn’t lessened at all.

“No,” Adam says, and there’s a world of frustration and worse tangled up in the word. “Nothing conclusive. None of it ever made any sense.”

Keith’s heart sinks. “Can…can you tell me anything?”

Adam shakes his head, and it stings.

“I wish I could,” he says, “but I… left the investigation team.”

The way he says it, Keith wonders at the circumstances. He knows he shouldn’t fucking ask, but he’s beyond sparing Adam’s feelings right now.

“_Why?_” Keith demands, barks it like a dog. “What the hell happened?”

“Command kept throwing walls up,” Adam says. “They kept classifying more and more data. They pulled the goddamned rug out from under us every time we thought we were getting somewhere. And then they gagged us. I’m not even supposed to talk about that much.”

“You know that stinks, right?” Keith says. “It’s so obviously a cover up—”

“I’m aware,” Adam says, tone hard.

“How can you stand even _being_ there? How can you _stay?_”

“Because I made a commitment,” Adam snaps, then he sighs. “I know it’s rotten, but I can do more if I stay than if I leave. I feel like I need to be where I can make a difference. Things have changed.”

And—Yeah, Keith knows exactly what he means.

The loss of the Kerberos crew had shattered Keith’s own personal universe, but it had also rocked the world. It had rocked _spaceflight_. It had shifted how everyone thought of exploring the solar system. The blackness out there at the furthest edge of the sun’s reach had ceased to be a frontier, a waiting wonderland. It had become an abyss, a darkness from which anything could come.

It had suddenly become the difference between _thrill_ and _danger_, between _brave new worlds_ and _lives on the line_.

Meeting Adam’s gaze, Keith knows they’d both felt the shift after that day. The funding had gotten leaner, and so had the public trust. Since then, every person who’s decided to keep getting in the cockpit is making a statement. 

“I get it,” Keith says, chastened. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Adam says. “Look, I wish I could give you something. I do. There’s just nothing to tell.” 

Keith can only swallow down his disappointment.

“Good luck with your teaching,” he says finally, turning to go.

“I don’t teach anymore,” Adam says, and that makes him stop.

Keith had never been in any of Adam’s classes, had never really asked him anything about his job as an instructor. It had seemed obvious enough that Adam had cared about the work, that he’d been dedicated.

“Why not?” Keith asks, and manages to do it gently.

“I got accepted into advanced fighter training,” Adam says, the sky reflecting in his glasses when he looks up, then looks away. “Couldn’t stay inside anymore. Thought I was going to go crazy just giving lectures inside a classroom. I felt like I needed to be ready for anything. You know?” 

Keith finds himself nodding. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

He doesn’t say something stupid, like _I miss him, do you?_

“A fighter pilot, huh?” Keith says, and feels the twitch of a smile bend his face. He digs for something kind, even though it makes his chest flare sore and raw. “You’ll be great,” he says, tries to show he means it.

Adam blinks, then returns the half-smile.

“You take care of that bike,” he says, and Keith nods solemnly.

“I will.”

He doesn’t say _I’ll be listening for your callsign_.

Adam raises his hand to wave goodbye as Keith turns to leave.

*

It’s not that Keith wants to have stayed there with Adam and talked more.

It’s definitely not that. There’s nothing more to say that wouldn’t have been digging blunt nails into old wounds.

Keith’s _done_. Worn out, dragged down by the fading rush of being found out. Staying any longer would have soured it all, strained it all passed breaking. Keith can feel the truth of that in the way his pulse hasn’t stopped thrumming, how he’s still just a little angry, just a little sad.

Staying would have pushed his luck in too many ways from too many different angles. He’s dead sure it would have ended badly. Somehow. 

It’s just…

The whole walk home—the entire two dusty hours it takes to get past the edge of town and all the way back to the house—he can’t find a reason to regret the accident of it.

Keith doesn’t regret running into Adam.

He doesn’t resent being trapped into talking, or having the potential legal consequences of what he’s done pushed into his face. He doesn’t even regret finding out there’s nothing left for Adam to give him about Kerberos.

It’s like a door has been closed, but quietly. Gently. Nothing left on the other side for him, and that’s… fine. It can’t be helped.

The card burns in his pocket the whole way home, but he doesn’t regret that either.

It’s nice to feel like that closed door isn’t locked.

*

The smirks on the guards’ faces fade a little more each time, start to sink more and more into glowers and glares, the smugness seeping out slowly like something spilled. It’s satisfying to see them get more and more sour about the fact that Shiro keeps surviving, but it doesn’t make his fights in the arena any easier, or any less dangerous.

Each time, Shiro finds himself trying to coordinate a new group of disordered would-be allies, and that gets… complicated. It’s almost too much to hold in his mind at once, too many factors to manage, but it’s also jarringly familiar.

Taking command of a chaotic group of unskilled teammates, jumbled together by circumstances?

It’s almost too much like running new cadets through their first few training exercises back at the Garrison. It’s kind of crazy how much of his old life he can call on now. That distant, blurred life that doesn’t belong to him anymore. He could laugh or he could sob at the discordant parallels of it.

Despite the deep strangeness of it all, it still feels good—_really_ good—to look into the faces of other prisoners and see something other than fear in their eyes.

It’s a balm. 

He’d felt like something brittle and toxic had taken over his veins, corrupting him from the inside out, mutating and damning him. He’d felt like there was no going back, no correcting the infection of this place. But it cures him a little more every time someone actually calls him by his real name.

The other prisoners still call him _Champion_ just as often, but it matters to him that they say it differently, now, that it sounds less like _monster_ and more like _defender_.

He’s finally fighting for something other than himself.

Some days that’s the only thing that makes him feel less like an animal, less like a caged dog.

The yellow-furred alien Jyrun ends up in a few more battles with him, and Shiro’s glad of that. The Galra clearly intend them to be a drag on his concentration, a burden, but for Shiro it’s a stroke of luck.

Jyrun proves to be a loyal second hand. It’s clear that Jyrun isn’t a good fighter and won’t become one any time soon, but it’s also clear that whatever slivers of guidance Shiro’s been able to give in the arena are helping them survive. It’s clear that Jyrun is taking all that they’re learning and passing it along, somehow, to as many of the other prisoners as they can. Disseminating the lessons of the Champion.

It’s heartening, but most of the other prisoners who end up in the pit with him are still too scared or too weakened to survive on their own. Sometimes they look up at him with too much expectation, too much faith shining through. They look at him like they _know_ he’s going to save them, and that’s—

That’s hard.

This isn’t the Garrison. The worst case scenario isn’t a failing grade and hurt feelings.

The brutal, blood-tainted reality is that the more bodies he has to look out for in a fight, the harder it is to make sure every one of them comes out of it alive.

The Galra know it. They’re _betting_ on it.

Sometimes, he fails. He can’t protect all of them, and that’s a lance in his gut, a stone around his neck, each and every time someone doesn’t make it. He loses what little sleep he’d been getting, has nightmares of those innocent faces crying out, _drowning_—

—and he realizes _that’s_ the punishment. The Galra are still making him pay for his defiance. They’ve found a way to make him punish himself. It eats at him, but he tells himself over and over that it’s all worth it to help the others survive. He’s giving them more of a chance than they would have had otherwise, and that’s… not nothing.

It’s worth it. It has to be worth it.

He can’t stop now, not even as the Galra crowds get angrier, more riled, more bitter. The ill-will in the arena becomes palpable, threatens to boil over, but when they taunt him from the stands, he never bothers to taunt back. It’s enough to stare them all down when the fight ends and he’s still standing. It’s enough to rob them of something to cheer about. 

On the rare occasion that he sees Ulaz again and they can safely make eye contact, the surgeon-spy gives him a subtle eyebrow raise and a small nod. Shiro takes it as encouragement, as a sign that what he’s doing is having an effect.

It’s not just the howling crowd, either. 

The guards have gotten rougher when they handle him, and it feels personal. Even the guards who had gushed their admiration for him as their favourite Champion stop talking to him in such friendly tones. Instead, they stay away, stay wary.

It’s not like when he first arrived, when he was just fodder, just another of the multitudes of prisoners. It’s very different than the casual disregard they’d shown him before, when he was truly disposable. They can’t be indifferent to him anymore.

Now, they treat him like he’s dangerous.

It means his defiance is causing ripples, causing tension somehow in the Empire. It means that other prisoners are doing the same, surviving when they shouldn’t, giving mercy when they shouldn’t. It means it’s _working_.

If the arena is how the Galra tell themselves a story about their own superiority—about the ‘glory’ of Zarkon’s reign—then Shiro and the others are twisting that, tangling it up into something else, something the Galra don’t want to see, something that shouldn’t be true. 

Shiro will keep twisting and _twisting_, however he can. He has to. Until something snaps.

He refuses to let it be him. 

*

Keith spends each day with the same knot of questions in his lap, the same unknowns weighing down his mind. For a long time, that’s the holding pattern. That’s his routine.

Keith has all but memorized everything that’s in his dad’s notebooks. He took pains to go over everything his dad had collected, everything his dad had left behind. He feels like he knows every curve of every hand-written letter, every crease on every printed page, even if he doesn’t know what it’s all supposed to add up to. 

He’s taken to sitting on the couch with the hardcover notebooks in his hands at the end of the day, playing with them idly while he thinks—or doesn’t think—or while he listens to—or ignores—the chatter on the radio. They’re good quality, well made, sturdy. The slight weight of them is nice, the subtly toothed texture of the covers comforting. He likes feeling the indentation of his dad’s penmanship under his fingertips, likes to try to read it like braille. 

Tonight is no different. He’s eaten a sparse but adequate supper—he cooks like he has conversations; only when absolutely necessary and then only badly—and he’s flopped down on the floor with his back against the edge of the couch, another notebook in his grip. He’s been flipping through it without looking, staring past the peeling wallpaper, thinking about the new cave he’d found a few days ago, _full_ of the oldest-looking style of glyphs—

That’s when his brain catches up to his hands, and he realizes he’s been running his fingers along something he hadn’t noticed before.

There’s a very subtle raised edge on the inside of the back cover. When he looks closer Keith can see that it’s an extra layer underneath, exactly the size of one notebook page folded in half and almost perfectly glued down.

Keith scrambles for something to cut it out, his pulse up at the prospect of some new piece of this damn puzzle. He reaches for the knife first, always against his lower back, but decides that would cut too coarsely. He doesn’t want to do any damage. He resorts to his one small pair of scissors, the blades held open so he can use one fine, sharp point.

Slowly, delicately, he slits it open. There are two pieces of paper inside, folded up very carefully. 

One is a diagram about how to prep, arm, and detonate the explosives.

The other is in his dad’s handwriting.

_Don’t let anyone get into the cavern.   
Don’t let anyone get a signal out, everything depends on it.   
Keep Keith safe.   
K will come back if she can. _

Questions cascade through his mind, crashing into each other.

What _cavern?_ What is his dad talking about? What the hell is out there that his dad would seriously be willing to use _explosives?_ What kind of signal? To _who?_ What did he mean, _everything depends on it?_ Why would he need to be kept safe? What’s out there that could possibly hurt him? Who—

_Who the hell is K?_

Keith stares at that single innocuous letter, stares at it while the possibilities shake him, stares at it until his eyes sting.

He doesn’t know for sure that it’s his mom. He _doesn’t_. But the fact that it could be—the merest chance that it might be, that she might be out there somewhere, that she might come _back_—leaves him turned inside out.

He surfaces from his own thoughts to find himself sitting outside on the mound where he and his dad spent so many evenings together. He’s staring unseeingly at the distant shadow of the Big Point, hands dusty from clenching at the dirt and face raw from the dry autumn winds. Most of an hour has passed. He doesn’t know what to think about any of this, but—

The thought that even his mom might have had anything to do with whatever it is that’s out there, that his _whole goddamned family_ is caught in the tide of it somehow…

It galvanizes his conviction that he needs to find out what’s going on. It’s more than finding out what’s out there.

It’s finding out who he is. 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups. 
> 
> So I always imagined Jyrun being like a cross between a nudibranch and a really fat kitten? I did NOT anticipate how much fun I would have writing more of them, what a blast that was. 
> 
> It was also really good to finally give Shiro an opportunity to fully manifest his inner Space Dad/Rebel Agitator. That's what the Galra get for assuming everyone's totally on board for their public murder sport.
> 
> And getting Adam and Keith to the point where they could have a real conversation? Dude. So satisfying. 
> 
> ...though dumping more questions that can't be answered yet into Keith's lap was maybe a little mean. Ah well. He'll get his answers eventually.


	12. Veer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this update finds you all safe and well! Couldn't get it done on the weekend, so... happy Monday? 
> 
> Feels like we're living in a whole new world (again) since last chapter. In light of recent events/media coverage and in an effort to avoid perpetuating re-traumatization, I'm giving an additional content warning: 
> 
> Shiro is forcibly restrained at the beginning of this chapter in a way that some readers might find triggering/may not want to read about right now. I didn't intend for Shiro's experiences to parallel anything in the real world quite so directly; I wrote that part of chapter many weeks ago. It's quite brief and it occurs right at the start of the chapter, so if you want to completely skip this description, you can very easily scroll past it. The description only entails the first dozen paragraph breaks and is done by the line that says ' "Is the subject ready?" '. 
> 
> Heads up also that for the rest of the chapter, the 'Descriptions of Captivity' tag applies pretty hard, though I promise that things will be looking up by the end. Please read with your mental health in mind! There's a reason I named this chapter 'Veer'. Hope y'all are ready. 
> 
> Extra special thanks to my lovely beta Sarah, who nourishes me and my writing with bottomless encouragement and enthusiasm. This chapter was difficult to pull together, so thanks for your help! HUGS <3
> 
> Black lives matter. Take care of each other, and stand up for each other <3

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**12: Veer**

_Blue shine bleeds into my eyes  
I still sleep on the right side  
But the white noise_   
_Can't leave the scene behind_

*

There’s no warning, and Shiro wouldn’t have expected any.

The guards come into his cell—twice as many of them as usual—and they surround him, then shock him to the ground, then restrain him. With a foot in the small of his back and the hot arc of the prod held threateningly close to his face, his arms are wrenched behind him and bound. There’s the familiar metallic-static sound of the cuffs turning on, locking impossibly tight around his wrists, the field prickling along the skin of his palm.

He tries to stay calm, lets them manhandle him, knows that he has to wait until they get him out into the corridor before he has any chance of fighting back.

Then there’s the touch of something else going around the bicep of his right arm, something hard and smooth, a ring or a clamp of some kind. It clicks closed and—

Instantly, his entire right arm goes heavy and insensible.

_Shit_.

Fear seeps in from the edges, surges cold into his gut when he tries to move his arm and _can’t_.

He’s being lifted to his feet, shoved forward out of the cell, half-carried along the corridor, but he’s only half-aware of it because _his right hand won’t activate_.

Too soon, he’s already been brought into a new lab chamber, his guards greeted by several masked figures in robes. Masks that he recognizes. Masks that fill him with a body-deadening dread.

That’s when Shiro panics.

He fights for all he’s worth, struggles desperately with a strength born of terror, but for all the guards he manages to throw off and all the equipment he manages to smash, without his right hand ablaze he has no real weapon, no real chance. He can’t break free.

He’s strapped down again despite his thrashing and yelling, held fast to the same kind of table that lives in his nightmares.

“Is the subject ready?”

The voice is rusted and pitiless.

Another robed figure has come into the room, smaller than the others, hunched into its hood. The rest of the masked figures pause and bow deferentially. Shiro sees no mask, only the pointed chin, the hard line of the mouth, the flicker of a yellow eye.

_Haggar_.

Zarkon’s witch, the highest Druid.

“Nearly ready,” says another mask, gathering the shards of something that Shiro must have broken. “Even restrained he is proving troublesome.” 

“Not for much longer,” she says. “Prepare him for deep extraction.”

Shiro can’t help the way he flinches, strains against the bands holding his wrists and ankles.

“Wait! What are you going to do to me?”

Her yellow eyes narrow, pin him to the table. They have the same wrongness as Zarkon’s eyes, the same unnatural light.

“Prisoner 117-9875,” she intones coldly. “Since you failed to learn your place, you are no longer of any use as Champion. Our Emperor has lost his patience. Only I could convince him that you should not be simply stripped of your arm and sent out an airlock. Instead, I will make the most of you.”

“What does that _mean?_ Why don’t you just kill me?”

“Because your skills in combat are too valuable to my experiments,” she says, sharp and quiet as a needle. “No one ever suspected that one from such a lowly species could defeat so many of our best warriors. Even pure-blooded Galra were humiliated. It has been most vexing. But no matter. We will take what we can and purify it. Replicate it. Your potential is not to be wasted. All will serve the Empire.”

She turns her gaze away from him, and it’s like he’s ceased to exist to her. Her scrutiny had been terrible, but her disregard is _so much worse_.

He yells, he demands answers, he spits out empty threats—he even pleads, too desperate to fell ashamed—but Haggar and the other Druids ignore his every word.

As they make their preparations—long, thin hands working deftly and without hesitation, practiced—he realizes that the table is not freestanding. It’s attached to some kind of machine, built into a nest of equipment, a riot of conduits and clear tubes, all glowing. It’s the colour of the light that’s most horrible, that awful shade of purple that saws into his mind, cracks open so much he would rather not remember.

When they lock something in place around his head, he starts to pant, limbs cold with fear.

All the masks turn to look down at him.

Haggar holds up an open hand and they—

—_pull his mind out of his skull_—

He loses time, then, loses his own name, loses his grip on anything that can be measured.

The light bleeds it all away.

He’s felt this peeling before, this unbearable siphoning—thought and sense and self _flayed_—but he can’t remember when or _why_—

He can’t remember, _he can’t remember anything_—

He doesn’t notice when he stops using words, doesn’t know how everything became pieces, how everything became so distorted. He is a current, a stain, an organic slurry.

He is pulled apart.

He is nothing.

* 

Abruptly, they stop.

He has no sense of when.

His mind slowly slots itself back into some semblance of coherence, the stain of his consciousness seeping back into shape. Language comes back to him layer by layer until he can think in words again.

They poke and prod him, move around him like shadows too far out of focus, but his awareness of everything is distant, warped. His body feels miles away, when he feels it at all. There is pain, somewhere, and fear, but he can’t find it and he doesn’t want to.

Everything flickers. Memories rise up to the surface, ragged and vague at first, then in flashes, sharper and more encompassing.

He remembers—

_The blue of the sky. Soft and bright, filling his vision, filling his mind from horizon to horizon. And then an airplane, crossing that endless sea of colour. And then a rupturing wellspring of grief—grief for himself—and a longing to fly so deep and powerful that he’d wept, and wept. And then, finally, arms tight around him. Warmth and soothing words._

He remembers. His father had found him that day, held him on the grass outside the hospital until he couldn’t cry anymore. He’d been sixteen—big for his age and already taller than most—but he knows his father would have cradled him like a baby if he could. 

_My name is Takashi._

_No. My name is Shiro._

He remembers more, but in pieces, separate slivers that don’t quite fit together. 

_Sunrise over the curve of the Earth. The wonder of continents turning beneath him. The ecstasy of velocity, of flight._

_The flight sim scores rocketing upward. Beyond anything he’d ever expected. That messy-haired head bowed in fierce concentration. The expanse of the kid’s potential opening up in his mind. _

_The rings of Saturn stretching out around him, glittering and vast. Every turbulence in the dust is a ripple catching the light. Wishing he could reach out and touch it. _

_Touching skin, feeling the sigh against his neck, knowing it won’t last. Raised voices and disappointment. The bitter weight of a final rejection. _

_The buoyant, low gravity of Kerberos. Pluto rising over the horizon. Voices in the ear of his helmet, his crew nearby. Rolling fields of ice and the sun a distant pale spike against black. _

_Purple and green light glinting off metal walls. Nausea and the smell of vomit. Fear pounding through his veins._

_Galra_.

He crashes back into his body in a rush of _too much too much_, his heart hammering, his nerves burning. They’re removing the thing attached to his head, peeling it from his stinging, sweaty skin. It’s hard to see—light pierces his eyes, hits the back of his skull with painful force—but through the blur and heave of his vision he thinks the masks seem pleased with whatever they take away in canisters.

It’s some kind of intricate tangle, suspended in liquid, glowing and rippling and unsettlingly organic. 

He yearns towards it—

—but he can’t move, feels afraid when he realizes he isn’t sure he knows _how_. His whole being feels leaden and weak, broken up and disjointed. _Wrong_.

The masked robes disappear out of view, and he knows it’s too late.

_What did they take from me?_

He… doesn’t remember enough. He only knows the horror of its absence, the hole of it gaping wide and awful.

There’s a prick of pain somewhere, and then a wave of coldness and loss as the world darkens.

He dreams of a terrible nothingness.

*

Faces hover over him, then leave, then hover again. Not masks with too many eyes under robes, just ugly purple faces, and that’s… a relief.

Shiro doesn’t remember why the robes were worse, but he doesn’t care as long as they don’t come back.

They call themselves the Galra.

Alien scientists—surgeons, he guesses, chemists, geneticists even, all wearing dark smocks emblazoned with designs of rank that he doesn’t understand—they appear in an unending rotation, always flanked by armoured guards.

The scientists treat him like he’s already a dead thing on a slab, unconcerned as long as they can do their work on him, but the guards are a different matter. They watch him warily, their eyes never leaving him and distrust never leaving their faces. They flinch whenever he moves suddenly, weapons ready.

It’s almost laughable.

The Galra are an Empire, spanning galaxies and dominating countless worlds… though he doesn’t know how he knows that. 

He can’t imagine why any of them feel like they need such caution. He’s an astropilot with a broken nervous system. They’ve plucked him off one of the coldest, smallest moons at the edge of human reach with nothing but the IEVA suit on his back. He lives on a table now, he’s no threat to anyone.

Sometimes they drag him into a tiny adjoining room to let him slump to the floor in his manacles, but that’s his only reprieve from the long hours strapped prone. He can feel the bruises from where the bindings dig continually into his wrists and ankles, the aches in his bones from long hours on nothing but hard surfaces.

He can feel himself weakening from the constant constraint. His left hand prickles and aches and it’s hard to tell if it’s because of the bindings or if it’s more than that. He isn’t even sure if he really sleeps, or when. The lights in this place never change, the sick purplish colour of it almost unbearable. Fatigue drags at him. Everything is hazy, confused.

He thinks days must pass.

They inject something one time and draw something out the next. They strip him, catalogue his many scars, confirm how they were formed by giving him new ones to match. He gets used to the smell of his own blood, the smell of his own skin burning. They test his body in a dozen different ways that he doesn’t understand, most of them painful. They shock him with some kind of electric prod when he tries to refuse. They ask him questions that don’t make any sense, things that he couldn’t possibly know. They ask him things he _knows_ he should know but doesn’t. 

The gaps in his own mind frighten him. 

They never answer any of his own questions. They won’t tell him how he got those scars in the first place, or what possible use it could serve to map them. They won’t tell him why the hair hanging down into his eyes has turned white. They won’t tell him why they took his right arm, why they gave him this new horror of metal.

_What did you do to me? What do you want from me?_

Shiro asks them over and over again.

They never explain. 

It makes him boil with frustration and despair, but he thinks he can keep a grip on his state of mind as long as he can still remember what the blue of Earth’s sky looks like, as long as he can remember his own name. He remembers enough to know that there was a time before this that he _didn’t_, and that’s more terrifying than anything else.

The pain and indignity of these… _experiments… _none of it matters as long as he gets to keep his thoughts. His memory is still jumbled—disjointed and distant like he’s watching it on a screen, like it belongs to someone else—but he can remember faces and voices he knows, places where he’s been, things he’s done and felt. He can _know_ things again. He can know himself, can recall his life before this purple-tinged nightmare, and that’s all that matters.

He’s physically weak, and his brain still feels like it’s… _cracked_, in some important, fundamental way, but he’s becoming more and more whole and he curls himself around a hard core of determination that’s rising up from somewhere deep inside him. He hardly knew he had it in him, but it’s there when he reaches for it.

There are so many different ways to die, but he is _not_ going to die here, not like this. 

He will survive this, and he will get out of here, even if he has no idea what he’s doing here.

Even if he doesn’t know where in the universe here is.

*

Shiro knows something awful is going to be done to him because they strap down not just his wrists and ankles, but his thighs and shoulders too. 

There’s only one scientist today, giving orders to the two guards at his back in a flat tone that could be indifference and could be contempt. He looks at Shiro—really looks at him—only briefly, peering at him intently over his surgical mask, seeming to assess every detail of his state in one glance before he turns back to his preparations. 

Shiro feels his pulse quicken.

_What’s going on?_

This doesn’t feel usual—for what passes as ‘usual’ in this ugly place—and the sharpness of that yellow gaze puts him on edge, raises the hair up on the back of his neck. 

“Prep him,” comes the command, and the guards move to comply. 

It’s futile, but Shiro can’t help the frantic plea. “No, _no_,” he says, a helpless babble of appeal. “You took my hand, what more do you _want?_”

But one of the guards is already injecting him with some kind of anesthetic. He feels it as a burning chill, spreading sluggishly through his left forearm. A partial dose goes in before the surgeon slaps the needle away from Shiro’s arm.

“Stop,” he snaps. “I want him awake enough to feel this.”

A ripple of dread goes through Shiro at the words—

—but then the surgeon explodes into motion, smashing one guard’s head into the wall and clipping the second with a hard blow to the jaw. They both crumple, unconscious.

_What the_—

The surgeon tosses his mask aside and hurries back to where Shiro is staring at him in shock on the table. Mind reeling, Shiro realizes there’s something familiar about his face, but he doesn’t know what. 

“Listen to me,” the Galra says. “We don’t have much time.”

He’s doing something to Shiro’s metal arm, holding a small device to its surface, some kind of data transfer being induced. Shiro tries to read the little hologram projection, but his vision starts to get dark. He fights it, but he slips under—

The surgeon slaps him, hard, pulling Shiro painfully back into consciousness.

“_Wake up_,” he snarls. “Zarkon has located the Blue Lion of Voltron on your planet Earth. You must get it before he does.” 

Through the pain in his cheek and the haze in his mind, the words and syllables won’t line up, won’t fit together into something with meaning. Shiro can’t make sense of most of it, doesn’t understand what the hell he’s talking about, but—

There’s something the Galra want on _Earth?_ What could they possibly want that humans have?

As the world spins around him, the surgeon reaches under the table, starts to mess with something there.

“What are you doing?” Shiro asks, alarmed that he can’t see the Galra’s hands.

There’s the noise of something shorting out. The manacles around his limbs release with a click, and Shiro is almost light headed at the realization that _he’s being freed_. There’s nothing holding him. His wrists and ankles feel almost numb with the lack. All at once Shiro’s breath starts to come a little too fast, lungs too full, spots swimming in his vision.

“I am sorry,” the surgeon says as he helps Shiro half-roll, half-slide off the table, keeping him upright when his legs almost buckle under him. “I could not risk retrieving you until now, and there is little time.”

“You’re—” Shiro breathes more slowly, gives his vision a chance to clear a bit before he tries again. “You’re really getting me out of here?”

“Yes. I planted a bomb to cover your escape,” the surgeon says. “Get to a pod. _Now_.”

Shiro is pulled forward despite his faltering gait. They have to step over one of the downed guards to reach the door. The body doesn’t stir, even when Shiro accidentally kicks it. He remembers the brutal economy of the blow that took the guard down, and he looks up at the surgeon half-guiding, half-carrying him like he weighs nothing. 

_He’s not just a surgeon. _

This Galra _prepared_ all this. He _chose_ Shiro, made a plan to help him escape. There’s no memory he can bring up to tell him why he would do this—there’s nothing but a feeling of blankness when he tries—but Shiro _knows_ him, somehow. He knows that this Galra can be trusted, and that thought is—

That thought is _insane_.

He can’t trust the Galra. Any of them. The Galra ripped him off the surface of Kerberos, kept him bound and helpless, destroyed his memory, _tortured and experimented on him_—

But this one is _not_ like the rest. Shiro’s sure of it.

“Who _are_ you?” he demands.

“I am Ulaz,” he says, plainly—like that explains everything, like Shiro should already _know_—and then he’s hauling Shiro out into the dim corridor before he can ask anything else. “Now come on!”

It’s not easy to keep up with Ulaz, but Shiro forces himself to push the disorientation aside as they make their way through a twisting sequence of lefts and rights. They come to a corner, a junction with a wider thoroughfare, and Ulaz makes them pause and crouch while he peers around it to see if the coast is clear. With his eyes still on the corridor, Ulaz explains how to get to the pod bay, explains which pod to choose and how to launch it, explains that he will have to leave Shiro and go in the opposite direction to make his own escape.

“Zarkon will know I released you, so I must disappear,” Ulaz says. “But if you survive, go to the coordinates in your arm. The Blade of Marmora is with you.”

It’s—

It’s too much information all at once, more syllables that he can’t parse, and it makes his head throb as he struggles to take it all in. He has _so many questions_ he needs answers to, so many that he almost can’t _think_ around the swarm of them, but one phrase snags on his mind more than the others.

_Coordinates in your arm. _

Shiro stares down at his hated metal hand, feels a gash of unease open up in his gut at the alienness of it, at the swell of terrible possibilities that crowd to the forefront of his mind—

But Ulaz’s body language is as intent and urgent as ever, and with a deep pang of regret, Shiro realizes he doesn’t have time. This will be his only chance, so he asks the one question that he knows he’ll never be able to ask again. 

“Why are you helping me?”

Ulaz turns back to him, expression almost surprised. 

“As a fighter, and a leader, you give hope,” Ulaz explains, solemnly.

A fighter? A leader?

_What the hell is he talking about? _

Before Shiro can say anything else, Ulaz rises, gets ready to make a break for it. “_Hurry_,” he says over his shoulder. “Earth needs you. We all do.”

And then he’s gone, disappearing around another corner in the half-lit distance. 

*

Fighting the remains of the anesthetic and his own confusion, Shiro goes as fast as he dares through the tilting corridors, the too-bright lights and the pain flashing through his skull making it difficult to keep Ulaz’s instructions in his mind. 

He has to stop and wait—heart pounding, breath held—while guards or sentries pass nearby, hoping to god that he’s staying out of sight. He’s so dizzy and weak that it’s hard to know where his limbs are in space, but the walls are bare except for bulkheads and windowless doorways, so there’s little for him to avoid.

He doesn’t realize at first that he’s doing it, but he becomes aware that he’s… tapping his finger against the walls. Counting silently to himself. He’s moving from point to point in a rhythm, instinctively ducking behind cover when needed, leaving cover right before another patrol would discover him there.

_I know the patrol pattern already. _

That wild thought almost makes Shiro lose count—he nearly loses his footing, the realization almost literally tripping him up—but he is _not_ going to let himself overthink such a tiny miracle, not now. He must have learned it somehow, and he’s just grateful for the advantage.

God, he’ll take it. He’ll take anything that will help him get out of here.

He manages to avoid getting lost or getting seen even into the pod bay—

—until he catches sight of an unexpected group of guards. He tries to back away from them quietly, but he crashes into something behind him, knocks something off a transport cart, sending metal containers clattering loudly to the floor. Two nearby sentries turn at the noise and—_shit_. He has to run for it.

He gets to the door of the pod, slaps at the button to open it, just as the sentries catch up with him. Panicked and still dizzy, he manages to throw the first of them over his shoulder, but the other grabs him from behind. His arms are crushed to his sides and he’s lifted bodily off the ground, the air crushed out of his lungs as his heels kick uselessly at metal shins—

An explosion bursts behind him.

Shiro is thrown forward out of the sentry’s arms, the heat searing his back and the concussive wave enough to smash him chest first against the open doorway of the pod. Winded, he falls hard and rolls, his temple hitting the metal floor. Distantly, there’s the clang of the sentry falling with him—

—the clatter of debris showering down over him—

—the slam and hiss of the door sealing—

—and then the light and noise get farther and farther away.

He passes out.

*

Shiro comes to with a splitting headache, his ears ringing harshly and his vision tilting.

He panics when he sees the armoured figure sprawled next to him, kicks at it to get away. After a gruesome moment of confusion he realizes it’s only the torso of a Galra sentry, severed by the door. The thing isn’t functional, though it gives a final dying spark when he prods at it with a foot. The way it twitches makes him feel a little sick. 

Shiro staggers upright, tries to remember _where he is_—

The stars streaking past the windows bring his whole mind to a stop.

He got out.

He got _out_.

_God_—he’s never been more grateful to feel the empty blackness of space all around him. Later, he knows, he’ll probably start to feel really damn exposed without some kind of vacuum suit on, but for now the rush of freedom is like nothing he’s ever felt. 

He’s out and he’s going back to Earth.

He doesn’t realize he’s laughing until his own voice is echoing back at him from the bare bulkheads. He stifles it when it threatens to become something else. He collapses into one of the over-large command seats until he can stop gulping each breath, until he can compose himself. He lets himself sit for just a minute, just lets himself breathe for a while—

It’s only when he comes awake with a start that he realizes he’d gone under again. He has no idea for how long.

He feels groggy, still confused—he remembers an injection of some kind, a partial dose of something that’s still clinging to the inside of his veins—but he fights it, knows it’s not safe to rest, not yet. The Galra could be right behind him, following him. The possibility sends a stab of fear through him, and it helps clear his head a little.

He takes stock of his own body first, tallying a mental list of bruises and pains. There’s the nasty throbbing in his skull, just tolerable. The skin on his back still feels tight and too hot and his inner ears hurt—there was a bomb that went off practically on top of him, how could he have nearly forgotten _that?_—and there's the stinging ache across his sternum from where he'd been slammed into the door, tender when he breathes. Nothing feels broken or seriously wrong, though, his bones and his internal organs all apparently sound.

He holds out his hands in front of him, first with fingers spread and then gripped into fists, his usual pre-flight test. They’re not exactly steady, weaving a little in the air, but he can feel that there’s some strength in them. The left one is unpleasantly numb, but he can ignore that. 

He forces his tired, shaken mind onto what’s next. _Work the problem_, he tells himself. He fixates a little desperately on surveying the pod he’s found himself in.

A kind of cockpit with two command seats, flight controls within reach, instruments lit up in a purplish transparent HUD projected in front of him and on to the glass-like canopy. Behind him he knows there’s a bare, open area for transport of passengers or storage of cargo, and then the wide back door, and… that’s it. That’s all he has to work with. He stares down at the controls, wracking his brain for anything that can tell him about how it _works_, what he’s even supposed to _do_—

Someone… Someone told him what he has to do. Someone helped him, but he… he can’t remember them. A hot, seething kind of ache lances through his head when he tries to recall anything about what they look like—the face, even just the vague shape of them—but the voice comes back to him despite the pain.

_You must get it before he does. _

He remembers it being oddly accented, measured and insistent at the same time.

_Hurry. Earth needs you. We all do. _

He remembers he has to warn them. He has to warn _everyone_. He has to find the… what was it? The sounds come back to him in pieces, the syllable combinations unfamiliar. Something with a ‘v’—

_Voltron_.

The word sparks in his mind like a candle flame in the dark.

_Yes_. He needs to find the weapon called Voltron, and whatever is hidden on Earth is connected to it. A part of it? He doesn’t understand, but he knows he needs to keep it out of Galra hands. He has to keep it away from someone named—

_Zarkon_.

The thought of the name makes a wave of fear roil in his mind, and he can’t remember why. The feeling is too insistent, too deeply rooted for him not to trust it, though. Whoever this Zarkon is, Shiro knows it would be a disaster if they got control of the weapon. Cataclysmic.

_I have to do this. Earth needs me_.

The luminescent displays overlaid on the air in front of him are unfamiliar—the language literally unintelligible to him—but Shiro feels something calm and resolute sweep over him when he finds the place where his palms fit naturally on the flight controls. 

At his touch, a new image flashes up before him on his HUD, some kind of prompt, and it’s a diagram of concentric ellipses that’s _so achingly familiar_—

It’s his own solar system.

It’s _home_.

The configuration of those orbits is so deeply engrained in him that even the Galra could never erase it. For one dark moment, he wonders if they _tried_… but he decides it doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters right now.

With a touch, he confirms his destination as the third planet from the sun, and the anticipation surge in his veins when he feels the pod come off whatever autopilot it had been launched on and into his hands.

He’s in control, now.

In all the tangled mess of everything he doesn’t quite remember, of everything alien around him that he doesn’t understand, this is a known quantity at last.

Shiro’s made re-entry literally dozens and dozens of times. He knows what angles are necessary to keep a spacecraft from either burning up from friction or bouncing off the atmosphere like a stone skipping along the surface of a pond. He may be mentally exhausted—his head is still throbbing—and he may not be able to read any of the text that the navigation system is flashing at him, but there are gyroscopic guide lines across the canopy indicating the pod’s local axes—_thank god_—and he knows _exactly_ what to do with those.

He doesn’t think the little tick marks along the lines are degrees as he knows them, but it’s enough for him to estimate, visually, how far down he can safely put the nose of this thing once he’s on the cusp of the atmosphere, how steep his pitch should be during his descent, whether he’s even close to keeping the right flight path—

In his old life, he would never, _ever_ try this. Not without instruments, not with a craft he doesn’t know. There’s a very real chance that he’s going to get this wrong and he’s going to die riding a ball of fire down through the sky, but—

He isn’t afraid. 

_I can do this_, he thinks over and over again, settling his grip on the controls. _I can do this, I can do this_.

*

Keith hears it over the radio.

Something’s been clocked on the Garrison’s Skylab radar. Something out of the deep black that no one saw coming, some unknown object that’s big enough to set off alarms and that’s heading straight towards Earth.

He’d been lying on the floor of his living room, staring up at the cracked ceiling, bored. Now he kicks himself off his back, knocks aside the packaging from his supper in his haste to turn the volume up.

“_—the composition?_”

“_Unknown. That’s why we’re calling you in, sir. It’s throwing off unusual spectra—_"

“_Well, is it breaking up at all? What’s it’s density?_”

“_Unknown, sir. Patching through to the observatory systems now—_”

“_Good. I’m on my way. What does Sentinel-Scout say?_”

“_Nothing, sir. This thing isn’t in any of the object logs._”

“_So it’s an untagged meteoroid, some kind of asteroid fragment. Calculate its trajectory and flag possible impact sites. If it’s going to hit, we need to know where._”

“_Tracking object now. Estimated result in twenty seven seconds—_”

“_—ready to muster fire crews on your say, sir—_”

“_—sir, the observatory AI can’t confirm where it came from. It’s path doesn’t suggest it came from the belt—”_

_“—radar puts it at less than ten meters, but it’s throwing off a heat cone like it’s twice as large. It’s not behaving like a natural object, sir, it’s almost like it has its own propulsion—_"

“_Are you serious? That can’t be right._”

“_—I’m telling you, sir, it’s making course corrections—_"

“_—I second that, sir, it can’t be a meteoroid, it’s guiding itself—_"

“_—results are in, impact site flagged! It’s coming down on Garrison grounds, sir!_”

“_—estimated touch down is in twenty minutes, maybe fifteen—_"

“_Jesus. Jesus Christ. Send out an alert! Notify command! Mobilize the damn fire crews immediately! Call Montgomery, get a quarantine response unit out there—_"

Keith doesn’t know when his heart started racing, hadn’t realized he was already in motion, but his hands are already on his pack, reaching for supplies.

_Something coming from the sky._

He’d dreamed about this. Literally dreamed about it.

He’s already considered what it would take to get on to Garrison grounds and then off again without getting caught. An idle thought exercise, only something hypothetical, something to occupy his mind.

It’s not hypothetical anymore. 

Something deep in his gut tells him _go now_. Something is his bones tells him _this is it_.

Keith pulls on his jacket, ties his bandana over his nose and mouth, shoves his hands into his gloves. He grabs the crowbar, flashlight, extra batteries, his knife—

—and the explosives. 

Then he’s out the door and slinging a leg over the hoverbike, kicking it into life and slicing through the cool dusk air, racing north at full throttle.

*

Shiro has no memory of actually hitting the ground, no memory of how he got out of the pod and on the table. His mind is still shaken, his sense of time and place fragmented.

He knows he must sound insane—yelling frantically about aliens coming to destroy Earth, about the weapon called Voltron—but the restraints across his torso and legs are making something wild and panicky rise up in his chest and he can’t calm down, can’t stop his voice from rising more and more urgently.

He knows the med-techs are human, knows that they’re just being cautious and following procedure, but Shiro can’t see their faces behind the respirators and it leaves him cold, fighting a wave of dread.

If he got out of one place only to be captive in another—

He feels his self-control slip a notch at the thought, the panic surging harder through his veins. 

And then—

“Sir, take a look at this. It appears that his arm has been _replaced_—"

—they notice his metal arm.

That _fucking_ Galra arm.

They call it a ‘cyborg prosthetic’ in the same alarmed tone they use when they say ‘fuel leak’ and he already _knows_—

_No. _

“Put him under until we know what that thing can do.”

_No, no, no!_

He’s already thrashing against the straps, already begging them not to do it, already yelling that _there’s no time, there’s no time_—

The needle pinches into his left forearm regardless, and then everything warps and fades—

After that, Shiro is only very dimly aware of what’s going on around him.

He thinks he feels a hand on his face. He thinks he hears his name. He hears other voices, but can’t recognize them. There are noises, but he can’t identify them. There’s movement, but he doesn’t know where to.

He thinks he might be flying.

He slides back into the dark.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups. 
> 
> YOU GUYS. These boys are finally back together. FINALLY. I didn't think it would take me six damn chapters to get us here, but here we are! Very excited for what's upcoming :D
> 
> I know that amnesia/memory loss in the real world doesn't work like how I'm depicting it here, but I went ahead and fudged it for story purposes. 
> 
> AND HEY, IT'S ULAZ. Nice to see you again, Ulaz. You're doing good work. 
> 
> Also, it turns out the aerothermodynamics of re-entering the atmosphere are kind of nuts? And it's kind of a miracle that anyone gets off and then back on the planet again alive and not, y'know, heat-ablated into charcoal dust? 
> 
> I took a Geology of the Solar System course in university and it was an absolute blast to be able to add some of the things I learned about meteoroids/asteroids into this chapter. SPACE, YOU GUYS. IT'S VERY COOL.


	13. Horizon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. COVID disruptions have been just the worst. Sorry for the enormous delay!
> 
> To make up for your tremendous patience, here's a monster of a chapter featuring our boys finally back together on the same planet! The 'difficult conversations' tag applies, like, 300%. 
> 
> Supercharged hugs of appreciation for my Beta, Sarah! This chapter is long AF and she still chugged through the whole thing like a champ <3 Thank you!
> 
> The Save Each Other playlist (link below) was absolutely on repeat the entire time I was writing this, so if you want to vibe with me on this, take a listen.

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**13: Horizon**

_And meanwhile a man was falling from space  
As he hit the earth I left this place  
Let the atmosphere surround me  
The satellite beside me_

*

“I just want to say it _again_, okay, for the record—_this is a bad idea_.”

“Hunk, my buddy, you really gotta stop with the worrying right now—"

“Watch it! Don’t drop him!”

“Don’t jump down _my_ throat, I’m lifting as much as I can! I’m like a third this guy’s size—"

There’s more grumbling and grunting in the wake of Keith’s snapped warning, but it doesn’t really register. The world is a tunnel zeroed in on the heft of the body in his grip, on the warmth of it, the realness of it—

_Shiro is alive, he’s alive, he’s alive_—

The giddy adrenalin is still thrumming through his veins, a heady mix of triumph and relief and shock and the edge of something sharper and weightier that he can’t name or fully feel yet. He’s vibrating with so much reaction that his breath is shaking out of his lungs on each exhale, all his systems not yet down off the high of the chase, of getting away from the Garrison in tact. 

Getting inside is awkward as hell—Shiro is big and heavy and completely unconscious, and the dark cloth he’s wearing is strange and slippery—but with each of them carrying one arm or leg, the four of them together manage to lift Shiro up the porch steps and into the house.

The sun has set and no one has a free hand to hit the lights, so Keith guides them through the unlit living room as best he can. He has to nudge open the door to his dad’s old bedroom with a foot and then, more or less gently, they maneuver Shiro so they can lay him down.

There’s a moment where they’re all just trying to catch their breath, staring down at Shiro’s form collapsed on the bare mattress, an unmoving outline in the dark.

The skinny brown-haired one—the cargo pilot, Lance—breaks the silence.

“Okay, so that was crazy,” he says. “That was crazy, right?”

“I can’t believe we got out of there,” the one named Hunk says. 

“Yeah, you _drove us off a cliff_,” Lance says, turning accusingly to Keith. “What gives, man?”

“We survived, didn’t we?” Keith retorts, bristling. The adrenalin is still prickling under his skin, just waiting to sour into agitation.

Lance mumbles something about _hotshot jerkwad just showing off_ and Keith remembers why he used to think of this guy as ‘the loudmouth’. 

Then Keith feels eyes on him, raking across his awareness. He finds the small one staring at him, hard. 

“So you’re Keith,” he says, almost suspiciously.

Keith blinks. He can’t put his finger on it, but this kid seems just a little familiar. He tries to picture him in a Garrison cadet uniform, but it doesn’t click. He looks too young to have been in his cohort. Maybe someone he’d seen in the halls? But life at the Garrison is very far away from him now, and he can’t imagine where they could have ever met. 

“Do I know you?” he says.

“…No,” the kid answers. “You wouldn’t.”

Keith endures another moment of scrutiny, and then the kid holds out a hand.

“I’m Pidge, by the way.”

Keith ignores the proffered handshake.

“Hi,” he says, hears the flatness of his own voice and doesn’t care. “Look, why the hell were you out there? What were you doing at a crash site?”

_How did you get there so fast?_ He doesn’t ask it, but the kid seems to follow his train of thought anyways.

“We were already outside on the roof and saw the ship come down,” Pidge says. “A fireball like that is kind of hard to ignore. I hacked the video feed into the quarantine unit and that’s when we saw _him_.” He jerks his chin towards the bed.

“I can’t believe he’s _alive_,” Hunk says. “The Kerberos mission was supposed to be _gone_. A pilot error at the edge of the solar system would mean—”

“_It wasn’t pilot error!_”

“_That’s not what happened!_”

Keith and Pidge stare at each other, their snarling outbursts having overlapped.

Hunk has his hands up, wide eyed with alarm. “Whoa, okay! Let’s just—”

There’s a soft groan from the bed, and they all freeze.

“_Out_,” Keith hisses. He grabs sleeves, ignoring any protests, and push-pulls them all out of the bedroom back into the unlit living room, closes the door behind him.

“Hey, what the—”

“Shut _up_,” Keith snaps, “and stay quiet. We’re letting him sleep.”

“He’s not sleeping,” Pidge says darkly. “They drugged him. I don’t think we could wake him up if we tried.”

Keith has to close his eyes for a moment. What else had he expected? Had he really thought that Shiro was just… exhausted? Resting? And just because he hadn’t seen any blood doesn’t mean that Shiro isn’t injured. Keith hadn’t had time to think about it, but… he hadn’t _wanted_ to think about it either.

“You saw the surveillance, right?” he says with forced calm. “Is he hurt? What else did they do to him?”

“We… didn’t see that much,” Pidge says. “The camera angle didn’t cover everything, and frankly we didn’t stick around.”

“As far as we know, they just restrained him and gave him a chemical nap,” Hunk says.

“_Oh_,” Keith says, sarcastically. “Is that all?”

“You were the first one in there, dude,” Lance says. “What did _you_ see?”

“I wasn’t exactly stopping to take in the details,” Keith says tightly. “They had someone on that table and I just… reacted.”

“_Yeah_,” Lance snorts, “reacted like _Rambo_.”

“Who the hell is Rambow?” Keith says.

“I just hope those guys are alright,” Hunk says. “You knocked them out cold, man.” 

“Look—_I don’t care_,” Keith snaps, the agitation fizzing in his veins finally igniting. “They had a person restrained on a _fucking slab_. I wasn’t going to let them get away with that.” 

He remembers those masked med techs, faceless and sterile, hovering over the body on the table.

_Vultures_. 

It was crazy. It was—

_Impossible_.

At first, Keith hadn’t even known that it was _Shiro_, hadn’t been able to recognize the face he would have done anything to see again, scarred and changed as it was. He’d thought—for that one insane second, stretched to breaking—that he’d finally snapped, that his mind was playing some kind of trick. A cruel, sick, _desperate_ trick.

Shiro being alive—_he’s alive, he’s alive_—had been so inexplicable, so inconceivable, just on its own. Shiro being treated like he was something _dangerous_—

Keith hadn’t wanted to imagine that the Garrison would stoop so low. Even fallen from grace and presumed dead at the edge of the solar system, Shiro was one of their own. Shiro had been their best.

_Shiro deserved better than this_.

Keith had thought his disgust with the Garrison couldn’t get any stronger. He’d been wrong.

“I can’t believe that they would strap him down like that,” Keith mutters, half to himself.

He must not have said it quietly enough, because Lance jumps on the topic like a dog latching on to the other end of a rope toy.

“I can’t believe they wouldn’t listen,” he says. “He’s _Lieutenant Shirogane_. Everyone knows the guy.”

“Look, I agree with you,” Hunk says, “but what about his _metal hand_, you guys?”

Keith’s head jerks up.

“… his _what?_”

Hunk actually flinches. Keith can’t imagine what his expression is doing.

“Oooooh you didn’t see that? I—I thought you saw that. Yeah, his right arm is made of metal now?”

Keith looks to Lance and Pidge—and his stomach drops like its been shoved off a high rise building. Hunk isn’t lying. He can see it in their faces. 

“It’s… some kind of prosthetic,” Pidge says, and he hates how gently the kid confirms it. “We heard the techs say so over the video feed.”

“I, I didn’t—” Keith starts, then stops because he feels like he’s going to throw up.

He’d carried Shiro in here himself, pulled Shiro’s arm over his own shoulder, held on tight. That hand had been limp, but warm. _Human_.

His _left_ hand. He hadn’t noticed anything different about his right because he hadn’t looked at it.

_Jesus_.

Horror and anger saw against each other in his belly. He stares at the closed bedroom door like he can see through it, imagines the man lying on the shabby bed, imagines ten thousand terrible possibilities. 

“I just… don’t blame the med techs for being cautious,” Hunk says carefully into the silence. “It’s been months, right? The Lieutenant was supposed to be _dead_. And then he shows up alive all of a sudden? Back on Earth? In an unknown space craft? Guys, he was in the friggin’ _Kuiper belt_. I don’t know how you did in your geography of the solar system class, but that’s _really far away_. And now he’s here, with a metal arm he _didn’t have before_, ranting and saying all this stuff—”

“What do you mean, ranting?” Keith interrupts, eyes snapping away from the door. 

“I mean, he was _pretty worked up_,” Hunk says. “You should have heard him. The guy was _not_ calm. Yelling about aliens coming to Earth and destroying us—”

“_Aliens?_” Keith interrupts again. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. The guy seemed pretty convinced that he was being followed? And that we were all in danger? He seemed really, _really_ freaked out.”

“I heard it myself,” Pidge says.

“Shiro’s raving?” Lance says. “I’m pretty sure we all heard _that_—”

“_No_,” Pidge snaps, “I mean—ugh, just _listen_. These bozos already know this—” he jerks a thumb at Hunk and Lance “—but I might as well tell you too. You don’t need to know all the details, but I’m pretty good with tech. I’ve been using my own custom equipment to capture radio chatter from the edge of the solar system. _Non-human_ radio chatter.” 

“You’ve got to be joking…” Keith starts, but the kid’s eyes flash fiercely behind his glasses, even in the dark.

“Half of it was in a language that has no match to anything in any linguistic database on the planet,” Pidge insists. “Believe me, I checked. And I triple and quadruple verified _all_ my calculations. It’s impossible that it’s coming from any source or technology that originated on Earth. The signals are _genuine_.

“I can only come to one conclusion. There are _honest-to-god aliens_ out there, just beyond the farthest point that our species has travelled to. They’re out there right now. They have technology that’s magnitudes more advanced than ours. And they’re looking for something.”

“The Voltman,” Lance says, with gravity.

“Vol_tron_,” Pidge corrects.

“—yeah right, the Voltron. What was that all about again?”

“When I was listening over the radio, the aliens wouldn’t shut up about it,” Pidge says. “Then when we were watching the feed we heard the _Lieutenant_ say it too. This ‘Voltron’ must be really important, and it sounds like the aliens are coming here to take it. Soon.”

Silence yawns open as they all confront the idea.

_Something coming down from the sky_, s_omething… arriving…_

Keith feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

There had been a feeling, the itching of certainty at the back of his mind…

He’d studied the petroglyphs carefully, _obsessively_, trying by sheer strength of will to understand what they meant. At the library, he’d read as much as he could—as much as his patience and prickling sense of paranoia would allow with other people nearby—about ancient humans and their art, local indigenous stories and legends, anything that might give him a clue, just a _clue_— 

Those lines in the rock alone shouldn’t have been enough to tell him what he _knows_.

The images of something falling from the stars—something _coming_—he knows it hadn’t been a record of some remembered event, some past legend or tale. He knows they’re a prediction, carved in stone. A promise.

A warning.

*

Light dances into the gloom of the bedroom from under the door, along with the hushed voices of the other three, trying to settle themselves down for the night out there in the barren living room. Keith hears them scraping around, muttering, trying and failing to be quiet.

_Ow, jeez, everything in this place is giving me splinters—_

_Doesn’t he have any more chairs? Whatever, I’ll just pull these two together—_

_Man, why do you get the couch?_

_Because scissors beat paper, that’s why. And if you call me a cheater again—_

_If I’d known I’d be hiding out in a hovel in the middle of the desert overnight I would’ve brought my travel pillow at least—_

_Do you guys seriously think he lives here? Because this place is a dump— _

Keith ignores them, the words barely registering anyways over the noise in his mind, the relentless throbbing of his pulse. The adrenalin hasn’t really gone away, his whole body still thrumming with it. He sits on the floor, back wedged against the small bookcase along the wall, keeping vigil over Shiro.

Eventually, the light in the other room goes out. Things get quiet. Keith doesn’t stir, doesn’t think he even blinks. Every ounce of his attention is fixated on the shape of the man slumped on the bed, his eyes hungrily taking in the sparse detail he can make out in the dark.

He can see the stuttering rise and fall of Shiro’s ribs, the way he’s shifting uneasily in his drugged sleep. He can see the damp skin of his neck and cheek, the edge of the scar across his nose, the shock of white in his hair. He can hear the slightly uneven rhythm of his breathing, can smell the faint sourness of his strange clothing. 

He can’t help but see the gleam of the metal hand in the starlight filtering in through the dirty window.

Keith stares at the thing, at all the stark differences between the Shiro in front of him and the Shiro he remembers. He feels himself get more and more horrified by what must have happened, his mind churning bloody with it. 

_What happened to you?_

The question laps around his mind in circles, dizzying, but there won’t be any answers until Shiro comes to on his own.

Keith has never been a patient person, and the long drag of the night hours is nearly unbearable. He even sleeps for a while, in fits and starts, back wedged against his dad’s old paperbacks, startling awake without realizing he’d slipped into dreams. Every time he does, it takes him longer to remember where he is, to come back to reality. It makes him more and more restless, more and more keyed up.

It’s not just that they desperately need to know what Shiro knows, that they need to understand what’s coming. It’s that Keith needs to see the moment when those eyes open. He needs to confirm for himself that Shiro is okay. More and more, he needs to know that this isn’t some hallucination or messed up fever dream.

It’s been more than nine years since anyone slept in that bed. Seeing a man’s silhouette there again is… jarring. Seriously jarring. It makes time slide sideways a little bit. 

Keith has so many memories of coming in here in the middle of the night for comfort. To wake up his dad whenever he’d had a bad dream, or whenever he’d been thirsty, or whenever he’d been scared, or even just awake and bored. Without fail, no matter how exhausted his dad must have been—no matter how trivial the problem and how world-ending it had seemed—without fail Keith had been pulled into strong arms and everything wrong had been made right.

_Okay Nugget, let’s get you some milk. _

_I’m not a nugget!_

_You sure, Buddy? You look like a lil’ nugget to me. I can even lift you with one hand, look._

_Dad! _

All those nights, all those small acts of patience and love—turning temper into laughter, little miseries into contentment—they all blur together. Keith doesn’t actually know which of them is the last memory, the final time, and that… hurts. It has for a long time. 

Keith knows which memory was supposed to have been the last of Shiro. He’d spent weeks deliberately burning it into his mind because he’d been so afraid that he would forget it too, would let it soften and blend with all the others.

But now Shiro is back, and ‘last’ and ‘final’ and ‘never again’ don’t mean what they should. The inverted unreality of it all makes something rise up in his mind, the sudden thought flapping wildly like a snapped line in the wind. 

_Could Dad walk back through that door, too? _

Keith grabs that thought and ruthlessly subdues it, doesn’t give it the slightest chance.

_No_.

It’s not going to happen. Not anywhere but in the best and worst of his dreams. His dad is gone in every way that matters. He isn’t coming back, no matter how much Keith misses him. By all rights Shiro should be gone, too. He _was_ gone. Keith had missed him just as much.

A second treacherous thought slips in next to the first, before Keith can smother it.

_Is this even real? Is this a dream too? _

The doubt slowly grows, until Keith can’t stand it anymore. He inches forwards on his knees, breath held and heart pounding, and carefully, so carefully he puts his hand on Shiro’s chest, resting lightly against his sternum. The breath he’d been holding comes out of him in a rush because Keith can feel it, under his palm.

Warmth, and a heartbeat.

_Shiro is alive, he’s alive, he’s real, he’s breathing, he’s here and he’s alive—_

Keith is shoved backwards so hard into the bookcase that for a second he’s stunned by the impact, pain lancing up his spine. Something hard closes around his throat, tight as a vice—a hand, a metal hand—and he’s almost lifted off the floor by the strength of it. Keith has to fight to keep that grip from closing off his air altogether, grabs at the arm and pushes against it, fighting for purchase with his heels. There’s real panic in his veins, and his instincts scream at him to defend himself—_lash out, get free_—but he doesn’t want to do any damage.

He gropes his hand up to the shoulder, where cool metal gives way to warm muscle, and slaps three times, taps out just like he used to when they sparred—

Shiro freezes.

That hand is still around Keith’s throat, but the iron strength of it is gone, the grip loosened. Keith sucks in a breath, feels his own throat work against the fingers around it.

“_Shiro_,” he croaks. “It’s me.”

“…_Keith?_” Shiro says, voice transformed by confusion and fear.

Shiro falls away from him, feet skidding on spilled books as he scrambles back. He comes up hard against the side of the bed and stays there. Keith can hear his frantic breathing.

“What did I—No, no. I didn’t mean to—”

“It—it’s okay,” Keith says. He tries to sound soothing, but his voice comes out crushed and too wet. He lets his head fall back against the shelf behind him, tries to get a hold of himself. “You’re okay.”

“Where—I don’t—” Shiro starts, then the words melt into ragged, gasping breaths. It takes a moment for Keith to realize that what he’s hearing is Shiro starting to hyperventilate, the edge of pain in each hissed exhale.

And _God_—the way Shiro flinches when Keith reaches for him, jerks away like Keith is going to attack him, curling into himself and clutching at his head. It starts an ache in Keith’s chest, pulling at his ribs, but he ignores it as he coaxes Shiro to _breathe slow, come on, you’re okay, you’re going to be okay_.

He feels clumsy using just his voice, but he tries to be steady and calm even while his own heart is pounding in near-panic. Keith doesn’t dare reach out again, doesn’t want to alarm Shiro or make him feel threatened. He sits next to him without touching. He offers his presence in the absence of anything else to give as he keeps talking.

_You’re safe, we got you out of there, we’re all safe for now, they won’t find us here, it’s okay, you’re going to be okay, just breathe— _

Keith is hoarse by the time Shiro’s breathing returns to something almost normal. He’s relieved when Shiro slides sideways to lean into him until he realizes that Shiro is trembling, only half sensible, and still making soft, pained noises. Keith can feel Shiro’s clammy, heated skin. He can smell the sick, metallic scent of his clothes, stale with sweat and smoke and… worse.

_What do I do, what do I do, what do I_—

It must be the room, and all those memories. It’s like his dad’s voice is coming out of the walls, out of the corners, the past overlapping with the present.

_It’s alright, Buddy. It’s okay. Poor kid, you’re still sick. Let’s get you cleaned up, alright?_

Shiro isn’t a child, and this isn’t a tummy ache or a nightmare to be soothed, but Keith doesn’t know what else to do.

“Hey,” Keith says. “Hey, come on.”

Shiro doesn’t object—or flinch away—when Keith moves to brace his hands on Shiro’s sides and then help him to his feet. Keith pulls that metal arm over his shoulder, takes as much of Shiro’s weight as he needs to, gets them both moving towards the door. 

“Let’s get you cleaned up.”

*

A light comes on just above him, warm and flickering.

It makes Shiro’s head throb all the more painfully, but he’s grateful. He doesn’t know quite where he is—can barely tell which way is up—but he knows he would rather be out of the dark. He’s guided gently forward, still too dizzy, and other hands have to help him brace his own against something solid and cool and—

_Keith is really here_.

That wasn’t a hallucination. Keith’s right next to him, murmuring quiet encouragements, holding Shiro up when he sways. Everything is still spinning, blurred. Even the memory of how he woke up in this place is distorted, a confused jumble coloured frantic and panicky. 

_Did I… Did I attack him?_

There’s a sudden rushing noise, and Shiro startles. He blinks his vision clear—it takes almost more concentration than he can manage—to see water running in some kind of basin. Just water.

He’s—he’s in a _bathroom_. A normal human bathroom on Earth. Hunched over a sink on his elbows, just barely keeping himself from falling over.

Something soft and cool and soaking wet is pressed against the back of his neck, and Shiro can’t help it, he groans at how good it feels. Shiro lets himself fall forward, puts his whole head under the stream, doesn’t care that it’s running everywhere. He gulps down water like that, with the water rushing over his face, doesn’t even use his hands. Keith is telling him _Whoa, slow down, take it easy_, but thirst has opened up a pit in his stomach and he can’t stop himself.

God, it tastes _so good_. He doesn’t remember what the water tasted like, wherever he was before, but it didn’t taste like this. He drinks so much he makes himself a little nauseous and he has to rest his forehead on his hands while the worst of the feeling passes, his hair dripping onto his wrists.

His head still aches fiercely, but the cold water is helping and some of the fuzziness from the drug is wearing off. He wipes at his face, clears his eyes, and—

—catches sight of his own face in the mirror.

For a lost handful of seconds he doesn’t know who he’s looking at.

He hadn’t known the scar across his nose was that wide, that deep. He’d known some of his hair had turned white, but not what it would look like hanging into his eyes like that. He… doesn’t remember if he’d shaved his own hair or if—if—

“Hey,” Keith says softly, pulling him out of the hole of his thoughts. Shiro tears his eyes away from the apparition of himself to that familiar red jacket, that wild mop of dark hair, that intent and gentle expression. _Is he taller?_ Shiro can’t tell, not with the way his vision is still swimming. “I can. I can get you some things, just—can you wait here?”

_Will you be okay if I leave you alone? _

Shiro hears what Keith meant, and he’s too tired and unsteady to object. Too tired to say thank you like he should. He nods, and then stops because it makes things slide around too much.

“Promise you won’t fall over,” Keith says.

Shiro wants to make a joke, but his thoughts won’t line up enough for that. The most he can manage is some kind of affirmative grunt. Even that seems to put Keith more at ease, and Shiro is relieved. He wishes Keith didn’t look so worried. 

“Stay here.”

Keith disappears while Shiro cools his head as best he can with the cloth clutched in his numb left hand. He rinses his mouth, drinks a little more despite the roiling in his gut. He keeps his right hand clenched tight around the edge of the sink, anchoring him.

Every minute brings his senses more in order, his mind farther back from the mire. Whatever the Garrison gave him is fading, but not fast enough for his liking. His body still feels like it was dragged behind a truck, like he hit the ground without a parachute—Shiro tries to ignore the fact that that’s basically what happened—but he feels less and less disoriented, and that’s good enough for now.

He needs to be ready for whatever’s next. 

Keith told him… Well, Keith told him a lot of things. Shiro hadn’t been able to take much of it in, not really, but he remembers the most important part.

_We’re safe for now_.

That urgent push inside him hasn’t gone away. Even half delirious, he remembers his mission, knows what he has to do, knows what’s coming if he doesn’t.

_The Earth needs you. We all do_.

But on Keith’s say so, Shiro will wait. He will let himself rest, just for a while. 

Keith comes back after a time, dropping a big towel and a pair of boots into the corner. Shiro can see he’s also carrying a large worn duffle bag, gripping it carefully, almost shyly. Keith stares down at it for a moment and then holds it out to Shiro.

“Take it,” he says. “You can keep anything in here. There’s… there’s clothes and soap and some other stuff. You can wash up and then you can change.”

Shiro takes it gratefully. He puts it down across the sink for after, suddenly _very_ eager to get free of, of—whatever the hell it is he’s wearing. God, he can smell himself. He pulls off the stinking overshirt and throws it down, starts to peel the cloying undergarment off with a wince—it’s filthy, sticking to him where he’s bloody, and he’s so glad to be rid of it, to feel some air on his skin—

Keith makes a bitten off noise, and Shiro jerks his head up to see Keith staring, wide-eyed and pale. He looks from Keith’s stricken expression down to his own chest.

Oh.

He’d forgotten about the bruising across his sternum, vicious purple-black and still swollen.

And the scars. He’d forgotten about the scars.

Before he can say anything, Keith’s gaze is fixed to the floor like it was nailed there, and he’s stammering that he’ll be outside when Shiro’s done. And then he’s gone, the door clicking closed quietly behind him. 

Of course.

The slightly sick feeling in his gut isn’t nausea anymore, not exactly. The bruises will fade, but the rest? He’s… going to have to be more careful, from now on.

He hardly looks at his own skin as he takes off the rest of it, tries to ignore the glint of his Galra arm in the dim light, leaning against the wall when his balance fails. He kicks the pile of cloth into the farthest corner he can, glad to be rid of it. Maybe later he’ll have the satisfaction of watching it burn. The thought is a happy one, and his unease seems to fade now that the awful garment isn’t touching him anymore.

He feels lighter already. 

The bathroom is old fashioned—or maybe just old—but the dull gleam of it all in that warm, gently flickering light looks almost heavenly.

He digs into the duffel bag eagerly, unearths treasures he thought he’d never get to use again.

There are some clean clothes inside that smell more or less fresh. Socks, undershorts, pants, shirts, all in dark colours and good fabrics. A flashlight. Two smaller towels. He finds a kit containing a worn bar of soap, shampoo and a comb, deodorant, and a razor and gel set. Shiro puzzles at the gloves, utility belt, and vest for a long moment—they’re all made of some kind of odd, treated material—until he remembers that Keith’s father had been a firefighter.

This must have been a spare uniform of sorts for him, a ready bag for when he’d had to go somewhere in a hurry.

Shiro digs a little deeper, unzipping an inner partition to find a respirator mask, a slim air canister, and some kind of handheld sensor, confirming his suspicions. He also pulls out a short but heavy tool tucked in the bottom, something that looks like a hatchet-pickaxe-crowbar combined.

Shiro stares at it, at the sheen of light on the blade.

The heft of it—the sight of it in his right hand, metal gripping metal—makes something _wrong_ twist in his gut, makes him shudder with sudden revulsion. He almost drops the thing, catches it just before it clatters to the tile. Heart racing for no reason he can place, he hastily wraps the thing in one of the towels and kicks it against the wall, next to the disgusting pile of his previous clothes.

Shiro has to dig his fingers into his temples until the throbbing of his pulse behind his eyes subsides. It’s only the thought of being clean again that pulls him away from the wall and towards the shower.

He doesn’t dare trust himself to stand in the tub, so he just sits carefully on the edge with his knees under the spray and uses the cloth and soap to clean himself. The hot water feels amazing—even on his stinging scrapes and cuts, the tender parts of his ribs and back—and he would stay there for hours, soaking it in, but it doesn’t take long for him to feel really, really tired. When he nods off for a second and almost topples over, he decides it’s enough.

Toweling himself off means he has to fight off more dizziness—waves of pain through his skull—but he manages it, then reaches for the pile of new clothes. 

It turns out that Keith’s father was roughly the same size and build as him, and that’s a stroke of luck he’ll be grateful for for a long time. The first pair of pants is just a little too short and loose on him, meant for a shorter and heftier man, but the second pair is fine. The shirts stretch well enough over his shoulders and the vest fits nicely when it’s zipped up. He’s too unsteady to get socks on without a struggle, but having such warm, soft material on his feet is more than worth it. It’s a huge relief when he tries the boots and finds them comfortable.

He sits on the edge of the tub again for just a moment, eyes closed in a kind of rapture, just feeling clean and properly clothed for the first time in what feels like a very, _very_ long time. 

He thinks he might feel like a human being again.

_Thank you_, he thinks, to Keith and to Keith’s father. _Thank you, thank you_.

*

Shiro had been exhausted. He had been aching and dizzy and unsteady on his feet, had been leaning more of his weight onto Keith than he’d wanted. He had been fighting off the urge to lay down on the spot and sleep, right next to the other three figures splayed out in the living room. 

Then Keith had pushed open the front door and the _air_ had hit him.

Cool night air.

Outside.

His lungs fill with it, so sweet and clean it almost burns.

There’s wood under his feet—a porch, Keith is guiding him down the steps—and then there’s dirt. There’s _earth_ under his boots, tufts of grass. He can hear it, smell it. Each step crushes up a tiny wisp of fragrance, mineral and fresh. 

There’s a sky above him, dim and spattered with a handful of stars.

Huge.

There’s the horizon in front of him, only just starting to lighten. An endless line, impossibly far away.

Something fills him up from the bones, and he isn’t tired anymore. He feels himself stand up straighter, walk faster. He slips out of Keith’s helping grip, and Keith lets him go. The land rises slightly—he keeps his footing, somehow, his legs stay under him—and he crests a small hill. He doesn’t hear Keith come up behind him, and he knows he’s being given space.

Standing there on that little rise, Shiro stares up at the stars, out at the horizon, out at the whole world rolling away from him. Like he can pull the whole damn planet into himself just by looking. The feeling rises, expanding in his chest until he feels like he could burst. Until he’s shaking with the enormity of it. 

Shiro knows it, now, in a way he hadn’t before, and it pulls him open. 

_I got out. _

_I’m free_.

When he starts to weep, quietly, he doesn’t try to stop himself.

It seems like a long time before it stops, but when it does, he lets the wind dry his face.

*

The porch stairs aren’t the most comfortable place to sit, but Keith doesn’t care. He’ll stay here until his legs go numb if that’s what it takes.

Keith has had a pain in his chest, under his ribs, ever since Shiro flinched away from him, fearful and… not all there. Now, Shiro is just staring into the distance, lost in something.

Keith doesn’t know what Shiro’s been through, what he’s seeing in the approaching sunrise.

Shiro had been Keith’s best friend in the world for a long time—_is_, goddamnit, he’s _alive_—but for the first time, the shape of him is unfamiliar. Shiro has put on muscle, but clearly lost weight, broader but also leaner. There’s the scar like a brand across his face and the blaze of white hair, both more startling in better light. There’s the arm and the subtle mechanical noises it makes when it moves.

And all those bruises, all those _scars_…

Cuts and burns. Raw red-purple skin around his wrists, like _shackles_. Punctures and slashes and gouges, some in sets like—like _teeth_, like_ claws_. Other marks had been neat, too carefully placed and cleanly healed to be anything but methodical. _Incisions_.

God, the scars had _crisscrossed_. Pink and livid over pale and faded, new over old. It feels like the sight is seared into his mind’s eye, and it takes Keith a moment to realize what he’s feeling.

Horrified, of course, but also… horribly elated. Horrified because each scar is a mark of pain, a record of cruelty. Elated because even that ruined skin had moved as Shiro did, marred but supple. Even that violence hadn’t taken him, and Keith feels a stab of guilty gratitude for that.

He doesn’t know what kind of friend—what kind of person—that makes him. 

The door opens quietly behind him.

“There you are,” Pidge says. The kid comes and sits down next to him. “Hunk and Lance just woke up. I’ve been up for ages. Looks like you have been too.”

Keith grunts noncommittally, doesn’t take his eyes off the figure alone on the hill.

“How is he?”

“I… don’t really know. He seems a lot better, though.” Keith doesn’t say _at least he can stay upright_. He doesn’t say _at least he knows who I am_.

Keith rubs at his own throat. It didn’t bruise, but he can still feel the phantom sensation of that metal hand clenched around his neck. The movement had almost seemed like a reflex. Like an instinct. The thought isn’t a comfortable one.

“Hunk told me you and Shiro were good friends back at the Garrison,” Pidge says, quietly. “It must have been bad, when Kerberos failed.”

Keith looks up at him sharply. Even while standing over Keith, the height difference isn’t much. The kid’s posture is withdrawn, tone thoughtful. There’s nothing seeking or needling about his manner, but Keith has had enough people try to use him to satiate their curiosity. He doesn’t trust anyone’s sympathy. 

“Yeah,” he says, dryly. “I bet you know _exactly_ what it was like.” 

The kid’s expression tightens at the sarcasm, eyebrows coming together in an angry line. He looks like he’s got something to say, but then tamps down on it with effort, teeth gritted.

“Lance says you’re kind of an asshole. So far, I wouldn’t disagree.” 

“That guy? He can say whatever the hell he wants,” Keith says evenly, “and I don’t care what you think.”

There’s a tense silence.

“Look,” Pidge says, “I’m not here for _fun_. I’m certainly not here for your company. I would have been out of here hours ago, and I would have taken Lance and Hunk with me. But we _can’t_ go back to the Garrison. I _won’t_ go back there, not until I have some answers. Everything we need to know? _The Lieutenant_ knows it. I’m sticking with him until I understand what’s going on, and you can’t do anything about it. I’ll be here until he talks.”

Keith bristles.

“We are _not_ interrogating him!” 

“Who said anything about interrogation? Shiro came all the way back to Earth just to warn us. That’s why he’s _here_. And Shiro himself said we probably don’t have a lot of time.”

Keith can’t deny that. They probably don’t.

“You know him best,” Pidge goes on, “so you should be the one to ask. I just—We can’t keep waiting.”

The kid has a point.

Keith sighs, the irritation deflating. It leaves him feeling heavy.

“Fine,” he says, and pushes himself to his feet, squaring his shoulders. “I’ll ask.”

*

Shiro is standing exactly where Keith’s dad used to set up the telescope, a tall shape bathed in the muted light of predawn. As he gets closer, Keith can see that Shiro’s staring down at his own metal hand, brow furrowed, face tight with deep unease.

The old hook pulls in Keith’s chest, right under his ribs, in a way he didn’t think he would ever feel again, sweet and awful. It makes him want to fix everything, smooth away that frown, erase whatever it is that’s filling Shiro’s eyes with so much doubt. It makes him hope that he’s enough to make it better.

Shiro startles at Keith’s touch on his shoulder—just a twitch—but seeing Keith, his face softens with obvious relief and welcome.

Keith hadn’t known what he was going to say, but it comes to him now, brought by a memory. The symmetry between that moment and this one is far from perfect, but Keith can’t help but remember the same kind of expression on Shiro’s face, then, just returned from the moons of Saturn and happy to see him.

“It’s good to have you back,” Keith says, for the second time. He tries to keep his voice steady and casual and doesn’t quite manage it.

Shiro’s responding smile is warm and grateful. 

“It’s good to be back,” he says, like he means it—like he’s remembering the same thing—and something that had been empty inside Keith is filled again.

For the first time since he’d found him on that table, Keith can tell that Shiro is really _here_, completely present and fully himself. Keith just smiles back helplessly for a stunned second—_he’s alive, he’s alive_—before he remembers Pidge and the others, remembers what he needs to be doing right now.

The urgency of it all settles on him again, sobers him. Keith’s not a delicate person, but he tries to be one now. 

“So what happened out there?” he asks, as gently as he can manage, watching Shiro’s face carefully. “Where… _were_ you?”

Shiro closes his eyes, and Keith can see him struggling with the answer.

“I wish I could tell you,” he says, honest and a little shaken. “My head’s still pretty scrambled. I was… on an alien ship? Somehow I escaped. It’s all a blur.” He looks at Keith, sudden curiosity shining through. “How did you know to come save me when I crashed?”

Keith opens his mouth, but realizes he has no idea where he could possibly start, how he could possibly explain it all.

“…You should come see this,” he says instead. Maybe showing Shiro the maps and photos and notes will help, will make it all seem less crazy.

He turns to go back to the house— 

“Keith. Wait,” Shiro says. “Before we go back in there, there’s… more I need to know.”

“Anything,” Keith says. “Ask away.”

But Shiro doesn’t, not right away. He looks back out to the horizon for a moment. Then he bends, wincing a little, and sits on the ground, legs out long. He turns to look up at Keith and pats the ground next to him in invitation, a faint smile curling up the corner of his mouth. Keith’s stomach gives a little flip, and he hurries to join him.

They sit like that for a little while, Shiro watching the sky lighten and Keith watching Shiro. After a long moment, Shiro finally speaks.

“The other three people in there,” he says, tilting his head back towards the house. “Who are they?”

Keith isn’t even sure if he can really answer that question.

“Cadets in the flight program,” he says. He knows that much at least. “They showed up when I came to get you. It was just easier to bring them with me.”

“They helped me get out of there, right? We can trust them?”

Keith wants to say that they mostly just got in the way, and that he has no idea if they’re trustworthy. But then he thinks of how vehemently Pidge had rejected the idea that Kerberos had failed the way the Garrison said it had. He thinks of Hunk’s fearful _Can we ride with you?_ and the starstruck expression on Lance’s face whenever he’d talked about Shiro. 

“I… think so,” Keith says. He supposes that they’d trusted him not to get them all killed when he’d revved the hoverbike right off a cliff. Maybe he owes them that much.

Shiro nods, like Keith’s say-so, even tentative, is all he needs. Then he swallows, his jaw tightening.

“When I woke up,” he says, “I thought—I thought they still had me. Did I hurt you?”

Keith wonders exactly who Shiro means by _they_.

“No, I—I’m fine,” he says.

Shiro’s shoulders sag a little, relieved. He’s silent again for a long time.

“…How long was I gone?”

Shiro asks it like he doesn’t really want to know the answer, and Keith searches his expression. Shiro meets his gaze, a little grim. 

“I need to know,” he says.

“Kerberos failed almost ten months ago,” Keith says, all at once, like he’s ripping off a bandaid.

He sees the words hit home and sink in, sees the shock claim Shiro’s whole body, sees the _it’s a mistake, there’s got to be some kind of mistake_ expression on his face. The _Tyche_ crew had already been eight months into their mission when everything had gone wrong, which means—

Keith can see the roil of pain and regret in Shiro’s eyes as he realizes that he’s been off planet for_ a year and a half_.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep my promise,” Shiro says, quiet and guilty, and—

_Jesus_.

“You’re sorry,” Keith repeats. He feels his face twist with something ugly. “You’re… _sorry_.” 

He’s suddenly so angry. So fucking angry. He’s on his feet, pacing, kicking up dusty earth and trying to breathe, _blind_ with rage.

“You’re fucking—_You’re sorry?_”

His hands are in his hair, pulling, fists against his scalp.

“Keith—” Shiro says, startled. Placating.

“_It’s everyone else who should be sorry!_”

It rips out of him, almost a scream. He hears his voice catch on the sharp edge of it and _tear_.

“They blamed you for _all of it!_ They said it was a fucking _pilot error!_ Sanda threw you under the fucking bus! The whole Garrison, they fucking—_disowned_ you! Everyone gave up on you!”

Everything he’d never written down, even in the pages and pages of scrawl that fill his own notebook—everything he’d thought and felt but hadn’t faced, not really—it all comes out of him, all the little wounds opening all at once, a deluge.

“They used you as a fucking _cautionary tale!_ You broke every fucking record, you—you were the best pilot they ever had! They gave you that commendation and then they _still _said you should never have been allowed to fly! Everyone—_Everyone _failed you! _I_ failed you! I should have fought harder for you! I should have found more proof! I should have—"

Keith has to get a handle on himself, staunch the bleed of his words. But he can’t. 

“I—I couldn’t even keep it together enough to graduate! Everything you did for me, all that work, and I _still_ got kicked out! You fucking—_died_ and the best I could do was get caught and run out here and fucking _hide!_”

He throws his hands up in the air, hiccoughs a breath that’s on the verge of being a sob, breathes heavy in and out until he’s no longer in danger of bursting into tears.

“I’m still sorry,” Shiro says, and—

Keith can’t help it. He barks out something that’s half disbelief and half growl. 

“God_damn_ it,” he almost wails. “What kind of asshole gets abducted by actual fucking aliens and then _apologizes?_”

Shiro has the gall to start _laughing_.

It’s not altogether a steady sound, but it’s still an anchor, a balm to Keith’s bruised state of mind. He feels raw all over, but less like he’s about to fall over some mental cliff. Shiro’s voice is a gift, really, something he’d never thought he would ever hear again, and he’s brought back to earth by a flood of gratitude for it.

He gives a little punch to Shiro’s arm to show that it’s _not funny_, actually, and flops back down next to him with a weary groan. Shiro’s mirth fades slowly, becomes a layered but companionable silence.

“I shouldn’t have dumped that on you all at once,” Keith says eventually, feeling guilty. It’s rough, finding out how easily the world can toss you overboard. He’d done it to Shiro without thinking, which is how it had always been done to him. 

But Shiro just shrugs. “I asked,” he says. “It’s better to know, and honestly… I’m not that surprised.”

“Still.”

There’s another quiet moment.

“Keith,” Shiro says, carefully. “You said you didn’t graduate.”

_Shit_.

Keith can’t tell if the hot, caustic mix rushing into his belly is shame or anger—maybe some molten alloy of the two—if it’s for what happened or for how he’d let it slip.

He doesn’t regret what he did. It had been inevitable, in a way. Only in some other reality could he have taken a different series of actions and still been able to live with himself after, but not in this one. What he regrets, so deeply that it still feels like he swallowed something sharp, is the _result_. His future as an astropilot—the future Shiro had been helping him build—utterly lost.

He can’t look at Shiro’s face right now. He _can’t_. If he sees any disappointment there, any reproach at all, he couldn’t bear it.

“No, I didn’t,” he mumbles, shrinking. He keeps his eyes on his own shoes. “I got kicked out for… trespassing.” 

“Trespassing?” Shiro asks.

“…Yeah.”

_But trespassing was only the final straw_.

Keith can’t bring himself to say it. He can’t tell Shiro that he’d been on academic probation long before that, that he’d been in danger of failing more than one of his courses, that his name at the top of the leaderboard had ceased to mean anything. That his whole cohort had collectively decided that he was a _liability_, and not just to their grades. 

He can’t tell Shiro that even before Kerberos had failed, he’d started to doubt he would ever be good enough to get to space.

“I used your codes to break into the sim lab,” he says. “I got caught. Iverson discharged me.”

“Why did you—”

“They were lying! I knew they were lying! They were using a sim for the Kerberos investigation but they weren’t telling anybody anything. I had to see for myself. Then it all went to hell and I… came out here.”

“Those codes were classified. Level three. I never thought you’d—I told you to take a staff officer with you if you ever—”

“You told me to take _Adam_. I thought you were joking!” 

“I wouldn’t joke about that. Level three is serious.”

“Yeah, well.” Keith finds a rock under his hand in the dust, throws it into the middle distance. “I found that out all on my own.” Shiro looks like he’s about to say something, and Keith cuts him a sharp look. “If you apologise for giving me those codes, I swear to god—”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Keith hadn’t meant to look at Shiro, but now that he has he can’t help but try to read him. He doesn’t see any of the things he most dreads—condemnation, disapproval, contempt—but there’s a lot going on under the bemusement and that mild half smile.

He wants to ask Shiro a thousand questions—a _hundred_ thousand questions—but he remembers the way Shiro’s voice had wavered when he’d said _my head’s still pretty scrambled_ and he decides not to.

“Iverson read me the damn riot act,” Keith says instead. “I’ve never seen him turn that colour.” He’d hoped that he’d get a laugh out of Shiro for that, but Shiro just winces sympathetically.

“I don’t envy you for that,” Shiro says.

“It wasn’t pretty. Apparently I set off all the alarms for all the secured sim team officers. In the middle of the night. And I kind of… punched Iverson in the eye.”

“You—_what?_”

“It was an accident!” Keith can feel himself flushing, getting defensive. “They tried to manhandle me. I’m stronger than I look.”

Shiro blinks at him. “Yeah,” he says, “you are. Middle of the night? No wonder Iverson was so mad."

“He didn’t even want to deal with me himself. He brought Adam in to do it instead—”

“_Adam?_”

“Yeah. Turns out he was part of the Kerberos investigation team. Iverson tried to sic him on me.” 

“…You talked to him?” Shiro’s tone is as restrained as Keith’s ever heard it.

“If that’s what you want to call it,” Keith says, but he knows that’s not entirely fair. “He helped me out, actually.”

“Good. That’s… good.”

Maybe Shiro doesn’t want to ask, but Keith can sense that he still wants to know.

“I think Adam’s doing okay,” he offers. “He isn’t teaching these days. Not anymore. He went into advanced training a while back, so. He’d be a full fledged fighter pilot by now. Probably earned his stripes, got on a squad.”

Keith can admit he’d been jealous when Adam had told him. If he’s being honest with himself, it still stings to think about, but Keith’s feelings aren’t what’s important right now.

“Should we contact him?” Keith says. “He might be able to help us—”

But Shiro is already shaking his head, something closed off in his eyes, and Keith knows he should drop it.

“…What about your parents?” he tries.

Keith doesn’t like to think about the Garrison’s remembrance ceremony—can’t, in fact, remember much of it. Reaching back to that time still makes him feel blackened inside, tainted by hazy recollections of fresh grief and misery.

He remembers that Shiro’s parents hadn’t been there, hadn’t been able to make it. Something about _the_ _duties of command_, someone had said from the lectern. By the way Shiro always talked about his mother, Keith had been given the impression that she more or less lives on the ocean, leading her own not inconsiderable portion of the Japanese Navy. His dad lives in whatever port town or navy base is nearest, and until he’d joined the Garrison at seventeen, so had Shiro.

“I was declared dead, right?” Shiro asks.

Keith can only nod. You can’t be merely ‘missing’ in interplanetary space. Survivability drops to zero very, _very_ quickly when you’re off-planet and something goes wrong. Keith had never doubted that Shiro had died—that would have been truly, completely, padded-room crazy—only how it happened. What it had meant. 

“Shiro, we could find a way to tell everyone you’re alive. We could—"

“No. We can’t.”

“But—"

“Do you really think the Garrison would let that stand?” Shiro says it quietly, but there’s steel under his voice. “Do you think Sanda would?”

“Your parents should know,” Keith says. “They should know it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know. But I’m not prepared to get them mixed up in this. Maybe… maybe it’s better this way.”

Keith looks at him, sees the twist of emotions in his face.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Keith. I don’t want to put anyone through more than they’ve already been through.” Shiro runs his hands over his face, bowed for a moment by the weight of it all. “_God_,” he says into his palms. “My _parents_. Mom must be—and _Dad_, he probably—” 

Shiro cuts himself off, going somewhere in his own mind. For a moment he looks… small. Younger. Or maybe he just looks his age. _Dead in space at twenty four_, the news articles had said. Now he’s a ghost at twenty five. Keith’s heart aches for him. 

“Later,” Keith promises. “We’ll make it right later.”

Shiro nods, visibly pulls himself together.

“You’re right,” he says. “We can’t stay out here forever.”

But again Shiro doesn’t move right away. He stares out at the horizon for a long, full moment. Keith watches him drink in the dawn, watches him close his eyes as the sun finally crests over the distant rocks. The light, when it finally hits them, is soft and warm. 

Shiro inhales deeply, then he unfolds himself, stands up—straight-backed and tall, like he always used to—and offers a hand to help Keith up beside him.

“Come on,” he says, his voice steady again. “Show me how you found me.”

*

Shiro lets Keith turn and lead the way, only too glad to follow him back inside.

It means he can have a moment without Keith’s eyes on him, a moment where he can let himself react to everything he’s heard, can let himself just… absorb it all.

Shiro lets his face fall, lets his fists clench and unclench, lets himself feel the ache inside him that has nothing to do with the way he’d literally crashed back to Earth. 

_Ten months_.

The time lost is like an open pit.

It can’t really have been that long, can it? It doesn’t feel possible. It _shouldn’t_ be possible. The gaps in his memory yawn open like a tunnel, the hours and weeks and months of his life just… _gone_, dropped out from under him.

He can’t… _remember_. Nothing is clear enough for him to piece any of those ten months together. It’s just a jumble of impressions—like he’d told Keith, _a blur_—a list of things he knows, but doesn’t know how he knows them. He _knows_ he’s free, the immutable fact of it held tightly inside him, but it still frightens him, how much he’s missing. How much he missed. 

He has no idea where his parents are, how they’re coping. God, just the thought of what his father must have gone through—what his mother would say to the verdict of ‘pilot error’—leaves his stomach churning.

He can’t imagine Adam giving up on being an instructor, either. And to leave that behind to get on a fighter squad? Shiro wonders what made him change the path of his life so drastically. He feels uncomfortably certain that his ‘death’ had something to do with it.

And… Keith didn’t graduate. Keith isn’t on his way to becoming a Garrison officer and a fully trained pilot. 

Of all the things that he hadn’t expected, that one takes him most aback, makes him feel the most like he missed a step… and fell out the back of a high altitude scout plane.

Keith left the Garrison altogether, and not quietly. Messily, burning every bridge.

Shiro realizes he isn’t disappointed. He _isn’t_, and not just because Keith _needs_ him not to be disappointed, had practically begged him with his eyes not to pass judgement. Shiro isn’t angry, even, certainly not at Keith. Exasperated, maybe, but not really because of anything Keith had done. 

He’s just… saddened. And stunned. _Shaken_.

Shiro would have been satisfied with however his stunted life turned out—whatever his mother thought, whatever his father left unsaid, whatever lover gave up on him, whatever happened to him out in the vast blackness of space—as long as one person would eventually surpass him, go farther than he ever could. As long as he’d done that much, set that much in motion.

From the day they’d stood side by side and stared up at the Calypso shuttle—maybe even from the day they met, at the school—that person was going to be Keith.

Everything was going to be fine, as long as Keith was following behind him, following him up into the stars.

Shiro had built a rock on it, deep inside himself.

Wherever he’s been this whole time out there in the universe, whatever he lived through on that alien ship, Shiro knows he got through it braced in some small way by the thought _at least Keith will fly because of me_. 

And now it turns out that isn’t true, hasn’t been true for a while. That rock isn’t there. Whatever rock Shiro had been for Keith, that had been taken away too.

_I’m so sorry_, he thinks. _I’ll make it up to you somehow_. 

A few paces ahead of him, Keith suddenly stops. For one irrational moment, Shiro thinks that he’s somehow heard the mental apology and is about to give him hell for it—

—but before Shiro really knows what’s happening, Keith has turned and pulled him into his arms, catching him up in a tight hug.

It makes the bruising on his chest sting, makes his sore ribs twinge, but Shiro doesn’t care. Being very careful with his metal arm, he hugs back, throat gone tight. He suddenly knows, in the way he knows so much now, that he has been alone for a very long time, that it has been a very long time since anyone touched him kindly.

Shiro remembers another time, out on the tarmac surrounded by Garrison hoverbikes, Keith gripping him around the middle just as desperately as he is now, the Kerberos launch only five days away.

_God_, Shiro thinks. _He is taller_.

“You’re _alive_,” is all Keith can say, over and over again. “You’re alive. You’re alive. You’re really—”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, and he breathes out, shaky and long. “I’m… alive.”

Maybe he can build that rock again. Maybe he can _be_ a rock again.

Whatever’s next, Shiro is grateful—helplessly, desperately grateful—that he doesn’t have to do this on his own.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> Aaaaaand we're at episode 1 of the show! FINALLY!!!
> 
> It was so damn fun to write everyone finally in the same space, just being cagey as all hell. Except for Shiro and Keith when they're together, of course, who are mostly just Coping and being Very Important to Each Other. And Keith knowing nothing about pop culture gives me life. 
> 
> (btw, the misspelled 'Rambow' is a shoutout to one of my absolute favourite movies of all time, Son Of Rambow. If you want to watch something weapons-grade adorable, I can't recommend it enough. SO DAMN CUTE.) 
> 
> Future updates will be shorter and more frequent, assuming nothing else lights on fire (metaphorically). Thanks so much for sticking with this thing :')


	14. Bearing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOO BOY, what a week/month/life that was! 
> 
> I'm absolutely DELIGHTED to finally be able to post this for y'all. Things finally get to be kind of soft and chill for these boys for a while, and I'm hoping it's as good for your souls to read as it was for mine to write. Enjoy!
> 
> Extra strength HUGS of appreciation for my beta, Sarah, who was gentler than she could have been whenever I told her I hadn't gotten any writing done. You continue to be what they call 'The Best' <3

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**14: Bearing**

_The monument of a memory_  
_You tear it down in your head_  
_Don't make the mountain your enemy_  
_Get out, get up there instead_

*

Keith can hear muffled voices coming through the front door as he walks up the porch steps. He hadn’t actually forgotten that he has, for a lack of a better term, ‘guests’, but for a moment it still startles him. He’s been alone here for so long that the sound of other people is deeply unexpected.

“_Man, what is all this stuff? Radio? It’s all modular. Look at all these inputs.” _

“_Holy—Do you know what this is, Hunk? It looks about twenty years out of date, but this is serious scanning tech. Why on earth does he even have this?_"

“_Knowing Keith, it’s probably something really sketchy_—"

That’s when Keith pushes the door open, cutting them off mid-speculation.

“Hey,” he says. “Shiro’s here.”

The three cadets actually salute when Shiro walks in behind him. Lance snaps himself sharply to attention, while Hunk is more dubious and Pidge—well, Pidge is feigning innocence, even though the sheet Keith had left over his dad’s equipment has been half pulled off.

The tableau of subordinate respect seems to take Shiro aback. He freezes for a moment, his eyes flicking across the three people lined up, but then his body language softens and he nods at them.

“Please,” Shiro says. “You really don’t have to.”

All three of them kind of… deflate. Lance actually looks disappointed not to have gotten a salute back, and Keith wants to roll his eyes.

He strides right past them all to the far wall, and without any preamble—before he can lose his nerve or any of the others can distract him—he pulls the cover off his old corkboard.

There’s no way to soften the weirdness of the reveal.

Keith knows how it must look. Like every caricature of every conspiracy theorist too-far-gone, splashing their delusions and paranoia up on a wall in a collage of maps and pictures, post-its and paper scraps and—_god_, Keith thinks,_ I even used the red string, like a crazy person in a movie_—all forming a spreading jumble that’s half haphazard and half meaningful. He resolutely ignores the exclamations from the other three, refuses to show any of the embarrassment threatening to make his ears burn.

He only cares about one person’s reaction.

Shiro’s eyes widen at the display, trying to take it all in. 

“What… have you been working on?” he breathes. Keith is just relieved that he sounds more surprised than appalled. 

“I can’t explain it, really,” Keith says, but he tries to anyways.

He’s already confessed so much privately that he doesn’t mind telling Shiro more of the story in front of the others. He can feel their gazes burning into his back, making him itch between his shoulder blades, but he keeps going anyways.

He talks about how he’d been lost after he’d left the Garrison, how—_something_—had pulled him out here, how it had compelled him to search for its source.

_Some kind of energy_, he calls it, as measurable as any magnetic field. It’s a fact that his malfunctioning compass had led him deeper into the wilderness as much as the tilting, seeking feeling in his gut, though he doesn’t mention that it’s one of the reasons he’d known he wasn’t hallucinating.

He tells them about that rocky expanse of wilderness, covered in boulders and riddled with caves. He tells them about the ancient petroglyphs, about the blue lion markings everywhere. He tells them about the message he knows they contained.

For a moment, he considers admitting that he’d dreamed about all this too, that much of his certainty comes from the impressions he’d gleaned in his sleep. He decides not to, decides he sounds crazy enough for one day.

“Those petroglyphs all share clues leading to some event, some arrival happening last night,” he says. He turns to Shiro, lets the last revelation drop. “And then _you_ showed up.”

Shiro looks seriously stunned for a half second, a flicker of apprehension in his eyes, but then he gathers himself.

“I… guess I should thank you all for getting me out,” he says, turning to the others. “Lance, right?”

He offers his right hand to the startled looking Loudmouth. There’s a moment of hesitation—Keith can admit that the slight mechanical whirring of the arm as it moves is unsettling—but the guy takes Shiro’s hand and shakes. That dumb, open face lights up like this is even better than getting a salute, and Keith gives in to the urge he’d been holding back. No one sees him roll his eyes. 

Then Pidge steps in with introductions and questions, asking Shiro about the rest of the Kerberos crew. Hunk interjects—_but back to the aliens, where are they now? Are they coming now? Are they coming for all of us? Where are they at this very moment?_—and Keith is happy to let them at it. He’d rather watch the miracle of Shiro effortlessly commanding everyone’s attention. 

Shiro tries to explain where he’s been and what he knows, but there’s so little he can give them. Keith doesn’t like the way Shiro still sounds a little lost when he talks about what he can’t remember.

When Shiro says the word _Voltron_, there’s an instant change in the air.

Hearing it from Pidge and Lance had been one thing. Hearing it from Shiro? Something prickles across the back of Keith’s neck.

_Voltron is important_, his instincts tell him. _Voltron matters_. 

“It’s some kind of weapon,” Shiro is saying. “I know they’re looking for it but I don’t know why. Whatever it is, I think we need to find it before they do.”

The question of _how_ hangs in the air.

_We don’t even know what this Voltron is yet_, Keith wants to say. He can see the same protestation about to pop out of Pidge’s mouth, and Lance certainly doesn’t look like he has any ideas.

Hunk, of all people, is the one who jumps in about finding something in Pidge’s bag and _a repeating series of numbers_ and something called a frown… hoff line?

“A Fraunhofer line,” Hunk explains, excitement accelerating his words almost to a babble. “It’s a number describing the emission spectrum of an element, only _this_ element doesn’t exist on Earth. I thought it might be this Voltron? And I think I can build a machine to find it. Like a Voltron Geiger counter.”

“Hunk, you big gassy genius!” Lance blurts.

“It’s pretty fascinating, really,” Hunk goes on, pleased. “And the wavelength looks like _this_.” Out of the bag Hunk produces a graph on a loose piece of paper, neatly hand-drawn in a way Keith wouldn’t have expected from the big cadet.

“Give me that.” Keith takes the graph from Hunk, who doesn’t object. The guy’s already turned towards Pidge, who’s half giving him an earful for looking through his stuff without permission and half barraging him with excited technical questions.

_A measurable energy source_, Keith thinks. He stares at the graph in his hands, then stares at the photos he’d tacked up on his board. His compass had been a blunt instrument, crude and approximate. If Hunk really can make something that can actually detect that energy, something that will narrow down the location…

Keith is suddenly certain—absolutely _sure_—that they can find the Voltron weapon because he knows exactly where they should start looking.

“Amazing,” Shiro says, peering over Keith’s shoulder at the board. He seems to be making the same connections, seeing the same things line up. “Looks like we know where to go from here.”

He flashes Keith a brief smile, and he knows Shiro must be exhausted—must be sore and bruised and tired—but the eager spark in Shiro’s eyes despite all that makes warmth bloom in Keith’s stomach. Excitement, genuine and electrifying. It kicks up his pulse, like he needs to be ready for anything.

_The call of the unknown_, Shiro had called it, a long time ago.

Shiro turns to the rest of the room.

“I have no idea what we’re going to find out there,” he says, almost gravely, “but it could be dangerous. You boys have already done so much to help me. No one has to come if they don’t want to.”

Keith can’t help it. He snorts, ruining Shiro’s air of sincere concern.

“You joking, old timer?” he says. 

“We’re coming with you, sir,” Pidge says, like it’s obvious. “Just try and stop us.” 

“Yeah!” Lance whoops. “Of course we’re coming! No way we’re missing out on this!” 

Shiro looks so grateful, grinning around at all of them. His determination is so infectious.

“Alright,” Shiro says. “Let’s go find this Voltron!” 

“Wait wait wait, hold up,” Hunk says, alarmed. He’s looking around at everyone like they’ve lost their minds. “But—I mean, _seriously_. We’re going to have _breakfast_ first. Right?”

*

There are too many people in his house, too many bodies for the size of it. Too many sudden noises from too many places Keith can’t keep eyes on, not all at once.

It’s already making him twitch.

Pidge asks if it’s alright if he and Hunk use some parts from the equipment in the living room to make the Voltron scanner. Keith agrees, though he wonders if he’s going to regret it later. He supposes he has other, better mementos of his dad.

He bristles at the thought of Lance being free to poke around too much in the bedrooms, so Keith shoves him into the kitchen to help Hunk. When he turns his back, he hears Lance already making loud commentary about how old and sketchy the stove is and how _wow, this guy’s got nothing in the fridge, just nothing, how does a guy even live like this_ and Keith only manages not to throw him out of the house by literally closing his eyes and counting to ten. It helps that he hears Hunk tell Lance to knock it off.

He comes back into the living room to see that Pidge has only just spotted the telescope, tucked into a corner on its tripod stand. An almost hungry light is in the kid’s eyes, his hands outstretched towards it—

—but Keith’s always been quick.

“No, don’t touch that!” he snaps, snatching the telescope off the stand and into his arms. “I mean—Please don’t. It’s… old.” 

Pidge puts his hands up like Keith might be armed—okay, he has his knife in his belt tucked up under the back of his jacket, so technically he is—but the kid’s face is still radiating a kind of skeptical curiosity.

“An heirloom?” Pidge says. 

“Something like that,” he says. “Just… take what you need for Hunk’s… _thing_ and leave everything else alone. Okay?”

Pidge puts his hands down and levels him a flat look, like Keith is driving a very hard bargain.

“There’s a government closure sticker on the front door,” Pidge says. “You know at some point you’re going to have to tell me how you found this place? And how you got your hands on all this stuff?”

“No,” Keith says. “No, I really don’t.”

“Hey, dude?” Hunk’s voice from the kitchen. “Where do you keep your pans? I can’t—” There’s a tremendous cascading _bangbangbang_ of metal on metal. “_Whoa_, okay—Nevermind! We found them!”

Then Lance’s voice, at what’s surely meant to be a surreptitious volume but isn’t, “—_ugh_, we’re going to have to wash those _twice_ before we can use them—”

Keith didn’t think he could grind his teeth any harder. He was wrong.

He spins on his heel and leaves them all to whatever.

*

Shiro hadn’t meant to snoop, but he’d been unable to stay still, pulled away from the others by a need to know the layout of the house, to know where the corners and exits are. And to find out what he can about this place.

He wonders who it belonged to. He wants to know what Keith’s connection to it is. Keith said he came out here after he left the Garrison, but—where exactly is ‘here’? Has he really been living in this place that whole time?

This is something that Shiro knows he should have picked up on, something that might have even been said already—something that Keith, at least, assumed Shiro already knew—but he’d been so disoriented when he first got here, and then so shaken by everything Keith told him he’d missed, he can’t be sure.

He hates that he can’t be sure. It makes the hole of missing time yawn just a little wider, a little blacker. 

He’ll ask if he has to, but he doesn’t want to admit yet how far gone he’d been, how scattered he still feels. He can figure it out on his own. It’s not as though the house is all that big.

The walls smell faintly of old pine, musty and close, and Shiro finds himself missing the clean air of outside, missing the sky already. He finds there isn’t much to the place. Other than the main room and the kitchen, there’s only two bedrooms and they’re not big enough for more than one person each. Hell, the smaller one is hardly big enough for just one.

The larger is the room he woke up in, he realizes as he peers in. The room where he’d thought he was still being held, where he’d been so out of his senses _he’d put his Galra hand around Keith’s throat_—

He’s pushing himself backward out of the room before he knows he’s doing it, needing to get away from that bare bed and the books still scattered on the floor.

_Keith is fine_, he reminds himself. _He said he’s fine_.

There’s a slight splintering noise, and Shiro realizes that he’s backed up almost into the second bedroom, that he’s gripping the doorframe there too hard with his right hand. He forces his breathing to calm, forces his hand to let go.

He bends down to examine the damage, but thankfully it’s not much. The wood there is already rough—No, not rough. There are deliberate marks there, carved neatly into the frame. Lines at different heights, each with a number, ascending the doorway like a ladder. The lowest is a four, the highest a nine? He runs his left hand up along the numbers, only half able to feel them through the numbness. No, the highest is a ten.

_A kid lived here_, Shiro thinks. Someone had recorded how tall they’d grown with a lot of care.

“I wondered where you got to.”

Shiro turns—hands half up, ready—but it’s just Keith behind him. Keith doesn’t seem to have noticed his flinch, though his shoulders are almost up to his ears with tension. He’s clutching something long to his chest.

“…Is that a telescope?” Shiro asks, bewildered.

“_Yes_,” Keith huffs. “Don’t ask.”

“I… won’t?”

“So you’ve had a chance to look around,” Keith says, and he sounds annoyed. He nudges past Shiro into the bigger bedroom, puts the telescope down carefully on the bed, the gentle action at odds with his growling tone. “You might as well go ahead and tell me what else is wrong with my house. Everyone else has.”

And it’s _so obvious_, Shiro feels like a fool.

This is Keith’s home, his childhood home. This is where he grew up, just him and his dad, not too far from the Garrison itself. ‘Here’ is where he went after he left because if this place belongs to anyone, it belongs to _him_.

The kid whose height is recorded in the doorframe? Shiro’s looking at him. The numbers only go up to ten, and he already knows why. _He really is taller_, he thinks, a little helplessly. It’s hard to imagine Keith as small as the doorframe says he was. 

“There’s... nothing wrong with your house,” he says, trying to hold up his side of the conversation again, trying to mollify Keith’s riled temper. “But who picked the wallpaper? It’s not exactly your style.”

The walls in the main room were peeling behind Keith’s board, he’d noticed, the floral patterned paper almost too faded to make out.

Keith blinks at him, his anger slightly derailed.

“My grandma chose it,” he says. 

“Your grandma?”

But then Shiro remembers. Keith had only told him the story once or twice, of how when he was still a baby he’d gotten sick. Seriously sick. His grandmother had come to help take care of him for a while. She’d died when he was still very young. Keith said he barely remembers her.

“Yeah,” Keith says. “Dad always said she insisted on us having a few fine things around. Too bad her taste was so awful.”

“Out of date, maybe. Not awful.”

The grudging upward twitch of Keith’s mouth feels like a victory, but then Keith sighs. “There isn’t much left here, not after so long,” he says. “I tried to keep track of Dad’s stuff, but—I mean, I was a _kid_ when they took me out of here. They told me it was ‘in trust’ for me, or whatever, but I didn’t know how to deal with any of it. And the house didn’t exactly hold up to the weather. A lot of things got lost, or messed up.” 

Shiro wonders exactly who Keith means by _they_. He wonders how much Keith really has left of his father’s—of his family’s—that’s still intact.

“Look,” Shiro says, feeling guilty. “I wanted to thank you properly. For the clothes. I know they belonged to your dad. I can give them back when I find something else.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Keith says, and he gives a fragile little smile. “They’re yours now. I’m just glad they’re being put to good use. I know Dad would feel the same.”

Shiro is about to tell him he can always change his mind, but Hunk chooses that moment to put his head around the corner.

“Hey, so I found these spice packs and went ahead and opened them? Hope that’s okay. And food’s ready, by the way. You guys can come and grab some.”

Keith stares at where Hunk disappeared back around the corner, face clouding over like a storm.

“…I have _spices?_” he says, incredulous.

*

The smells coming from the kitchen are unimaginably good, and Shiro feels a rush of weakness at the thought of food. He has no idea when he last ate, but his body knows it’s been too long, far too long.

He doesn’t realize how dazed he is by the smell and the anticipation until Keith’s hand on his shoulder is pushing him down to sit on the couch. There’s the rustle and scrape of chairs being pulled closer, voices debating where and how to sit, and then a weight on the cushion next to him when Keith settles beside him. 

“I had to toss out the kitchen table,” he’s saying. “This is fine, stop complaining—”

But then Shiro stops listening because an almost overflowing plate of scrambled eggs is placed on the coffee table in front of him and his world turns into a tunnel, narrowed by hunger. 

And it’s _so good_. The first mouthful makes him want to cry.

It’s so hot it’s still steaming, and the flood of it over his tongue is amazing. It’s almost too hot, actually, but that doesn’t stop him from taking another mouthful, and another—

He becomes aware of eyes on him. He looks up to see the others quickly looking away, and he doesn’t know why until Keith very gently presses a fork into his hand.

“Looks like you were hungry,” he says quietly, and Shiro feels himself flush as he swallows.

There’s a silence around the table while everyone pretends, for Shiro’s sake, that they didn’t see that. It doesn’t last long, though, as everyone else takes their own first bites and then the air is full of appreciative noises and compliments for Hunk’s cooking. 

“Come on, it wasn’t just Hunk,” Lance says, a little sulkily. “I helped.”

“True, very true,” Hunk says. “I’ve never seen someone slice the fuzzy bits off cheese with so much flair."

“The cheese was _fuzzy?_” Pidge says, fork only pausing for a second before he puts another piece in his mouth and chews thoughtfully. 

“_Hey_,” Keith says, pointing with his own fork. “Lay off about the cheese. It’s hard to get supplies out here.”

“I mean, some of the best cheeses are fuzzy,” Hunk says, brightly. “Or, like, _super_ stinky. This one time? I thought someone had taken off their sweaty shoes in the restaurant, but turns out it was coming from the appetizer two tables over—”

There’s a chorus of groans and laughs, and Shiro lets himself keep eating, eased by the banter. The fork feels odd in his hand, unfamiliar, but he forces himself to ignore that. His belly roils and aches, too empty for too long, but he paces himself and it doesn’t get any worse. He would give his body more time, but the taste is too good, too missed, and he knows he needs it. He finishes the whole plate, and then is surprised when Hunk gets up to fetch him more.

The cadet is grinning at him as he pushes another generous portion out of the pan onto his plate.

“I used up Keith’s whole carton of eggs, but I figured we’d need it. Have as much as you want.”

God, he’s grateful. 

There’s only water in plastic bottles to drink and Shiro stares at his for a moment before he remembers how to twist it open. He doesn’t have a chance to feel self-conscious before Lance is proposing a toast—"To finding the Voltron!”—and they’re all trying to clink their bottles together. It makes more of a crinkle than a clink, but Shiro is so, so grateful.

“I’m really glad I made it back to Earth,” he says, and he has to concentrate to keep his voice steady. “I’m really glad you guys found me.”

They all smile back at him, and it hits him hard.

Green tea through a straw, thermostabilized chili rehydrated in its sealed plastic bag, freeze-dried fruit and cake in a pouch for dessert. The food hadn’t been fresh or even that hot, but the three of them had still eaten together in the tiny galley of the _Tyche_ at least once every day-cycle, laughing over morsels and arguing about who would get the last precious pack of macaroni and cheese once they were finally inbound again. 

Sam and Matt are still out there somewhere, he knows. He hasn’t forgotten his crew, he _hasn’t_.

But right now, he’s here, back planetside with no way up into space and time ticking away before the Galra descend. He’s here, with a new group he has to take care of. He promises himself that he’ll find his crew, somehow, but for now, they have to find Voltron.

*

“Okay, so I’ve been _dying_ to ask you something, sir,” Lance says, handing him another freshly washed plate, still steaming—

—and Shiro feels himself freeze, towel poised unmoving over the dish that’s still dripping all over the countertop, something cold pooling in his stomach.

He’d been full and content after their meal, almost sleepy, lulled by the sounds of Hunk and Pidge’s technical chatter. He’d been feeling relaxed enough that when Lance had volunteered to clean up—saying his _mamá_ raised him right and _hosts shouldn’t have to do the dishes_—Shiro had volunteered too.

Now his pulse has sped up because even if he doesn’t know exactly what Lance is going to ask about, he can guess.

Aliens. Captivity. Danger.

_Galra_. 

He wonders if there’s a way to shove his metal arm out of sight. He wonders, a little wildly, if he could just leave the room. Maybe he could find some pretense for going into the living room to see how the Voltron ‘finder’ is going, or he could excuse himself to go help Keith with… whatever it is he’s busy doing outside.

_I don’t want to talk about any of it again right now_, Shiro thinks, a little desperately. _I don’t want to try to remember more_—

“How big is the InterJ-2, like, for real? ‘Cause in the videos it’s really hard to tell.”

Shiro feels his mental gears grind, and then strip.

“…sorry, what?” he says weakly.

“When you did the moon shadow flight, sir. Y’know, during the eclipse. It was in an InterJ-2, but I always wondered how big that thing is. I mean, I already checked the specs online, of course I checked the specs online. I know it’s _big_. It’s just, none of that tells you what it’s like to be inside it. Do you have lots of elbow room? Does it feel like you’re flying a supersonic bus?”

Shiro can’t help it. A laugh bubbles up out of him.

“No, the InterJ-2 isn’t like a bus. Not at all. It’s…”

And he has to stop and grasp for the memories. He has to reach back… and its harder than it should be.

“It’s like any other commercial or cargo plane,” he manages, “just… a lot faster.”

“Okay, but what’s it like actually being in the cockpit? What’s it like flying under an eclipse? You were under the shadow of the moon for _two whole hours_. That’s gotta be awesome!”

“Well…”

Shiro does his halting best to describe something that feels like it was in a completely different life, Lance hanging uncomfortably on every detail. Every time he thinks he gives enough, Lance has another question, and another, and another.

_Was it dangerous? How many people were on board? Were they all scientists? Did you get like a snack break or something, or were you on the stick the whole time? I heard the weather gets really freaky during an eclipse, what was it like to fly through that? Was there a party after you guys landed? _

The cadet is so delighted and curious that Shiro can’t help but keep trying to dig up answers, guilty at the idea that he’d considered avoiding him. It’s harmless.

Mostly harmless. It should be harmless. 

He’s utterly unprepared to have to fight down the urge to say _you’re wrong_, _that wasn’t me, it couldn’t have been me_.

Shiro can see it all clearly in his mind’s eye—can recall the factual bones of that flight, from planning to pre-flight to take off to landing to debrief—but it’s hard to place himself, as he is now, inside those memories. It feels like there’s a fault line in his mind, a rift between _then_ and _now_, and he’s on the wrong side of it.

It’s disorienting, and… upsetting.

It makes Shiro go chill all over, how separated he feels from things he knows happened to him, things he knows he did before he was—

Before he was taken.

Shiro feels his own mind starting to slip back into that haze, that darkness, trying to remember what it can’t. The edge of fear uncurls in his belly, the edge of unremembered pain—

But then there’s the next volley of questions—

_Did you see all the news coverage? Did you see that one video where the host totally messed up your name? Do people always mispronounce it like that? How do you even deal with that? _

—and it pulls him forcibly back to the here and now, to the warm light of Keith’s father’s kitchen, to the dripping plate in his hand. He realizes that he can feel the slight warmth of the ceramic even in his metal fingers, fainter than his flesh hand but still there, and it grounds him.

He can answer. He can _make_ himself answer, and forcing himself to do it over and over—reach back for all those old details, find the texture of all those old experiences—it stitches him more together, makes him feel more in one piece with the old self he isn’t sure he is anymore. 

Lance remembers him as Lieutenant Shirogane. Maybe the cadet never knew him as more than a sim group supervisor or a face on a news screen, but it’s an anchor nonetheless.

“I saw the moon shadow flight live on TV when it happened,” Lance says, gaze going distant and face going dreamy. “My teacher put the stream up during class and I decided then and there I wanted to be a pilot. My uncle Sergio has this old crop-duster, right? But I’ve always wanted to do something cooler than that. I applied for the flight program at the Garrison as soon as I could after I saw that video. Figured even if I could only get my cargo pilot qualifications I could still fly something supersonic like an InterJ. That would be cool enough, you know?” Then he stiffens, hands tightening around the next plate, face freezing in horror. “_Don’t_ tell Keith that!”

Shiro feels his mouth twitch. “I won’t, I promise.”

“I mean, I’m still gunning for fighter class! I’m not giving up on that! I’m gonna beat him someday, I swear!”

Shiro remembers Keith’s scores in the sim, and he remembers Lance’s too. They were never even close—not a single other cadet, not in that cohort or any other, could compare to Keith’s scores—but he’s seen some cadets pull off remarkable improvements before.

“If you keep training, maybe you will,” he offers.

“You really think so?”

Lance’s eyes are all but sparkling.

“Yeah,” Shiro says, “I do.”

Lance gives a _hell yeah!_ of victory at the same time that there’s a triumphant whoop from the living room, followed by what sounds like a high five to the word _Fraunhofer!_

The Voltron finder is ready.

The rest of the dishes are finished in a rush, Lance speculating out loud about what they’re going to find while all but throwing the last few dishes at Shiro to dry. Hunk and Pidge crash into the kitchen, both babbling excitedly about the little black box Hunk has clutched proudly in his hands. It reminds Shiro so much of Matt, that near-manic enthusiasm. They’re all talking at once and it’s amusing and it’s too much, all at the same time.

Shiro manages to herd them all out the front door ahead of him, his old instincts for wrangling noisy cadets coming back to him more easily, now.

When he’s the last person in the house, he lets himself take a moment alone to close his eyes in the quiet. Just a moment to steady himself, to remember his mission. 

_The Earth needs you_.

Then Shiro steps out under a clear blue sky—so, _so_ blue—and he feels like he finally knows where he is, in a way he hasn’t since he woke up on that Garrison table. Maybe since long before that. Maybe even since he set foot on Kerberos. 

He looks up at all that blue, and he feels like he can finally breathe. 

He’s here, and he’s free.

He’s ready.

*

Keith hears the other three before he sees them, chattering as they come around the side of the house to the back, where Keith has been packing supplies and prepping the hoverbike. 

Hunk and Pidge are excited about their new piece of equipment, but Lance, of all of them, is particularly loud and ebullient. Keith wonders what the hell is so great about washing dirty dishes that the guy looks this pleased with himself afterwards.

Keith supposes Shiro must have had something to do with it. Knowing Shiro, he said something _nice_, and Keith almost groans out loud because now Lance is going to be insufferable about it. 

The man himself comes around the side of the house, eyes already focused on the distant horizon, the place where they have to go and start their search. When he catches sight of Keith and what he’s standing next to, he stops short.

“You stole my hoverbike?” Shiro says, almost exasperated. “_Again?_”

His voice cuts right through whatever conversation the others were having, and all three of them turn, startled.

But Shiro doesn’t look angry, not really. Shiro actually looks kind of delighted, and Keith lets go of the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Shiro comes to look his hoverbike over, lovingly running his hands over it, smiling to himself.

“Wait. _What?_” Hunk blurts.

“What do you mean, ‘again’?” Lance splutters.

“You stole his hoverbike _more than once_?” Pidge says, one eyebrow high.

“Well, the first time wasn’t the hoverbike,” Shiro says, distractedly, attention firmly fixed on his machine, crouching down to check the condition of the turbines.

Lance’s eyes look like they’re going to bug out of his head. He whips round to stare accusingly at Keith.

“_Spill_,” he demands.

“We’re not talking about it,” Keith says flatly. He’s not explaining himself, not to the likes of Lance.

“You must have taken it out to some rough places,” Shiro says, “but you took good care of it.” He straightens and turns back to Keith, looking pleased. “I’m glad you’re the one who had it.”

And… Keith can’t say anything to that, just feels his ears get hot. His throat has gone suddenly tight, so he just nods. He doesn’t say _it was the last piece of you I had_. He doesn’t say _it was the only thing that made me feel free_. It feels right that Shiro can have it back, like at least one thing is back the way it should be.

“Wow, did this thing really fit all five of us?” Hunk is looking nervous again. “It doesn’t really look like it will fit all five of us.”

“Well, this time the Lieutenant’s awake,” Pidge points out. “It should be a lot easier with you not… unconscious, sir.”

“Look, I really don’t think I count as a lieutenant anymore,” Shiro says. “You can all just call me Shiro. No need for ‘sir’.”

Pidge and Hunk look merely pleased. Lance looks like he could die happy. Keith almost snorts again.

“Alright team, I’m open to ideas,” Shiro says, gesturing to the hoverbike. “How should we do this?”

When Shiro looks his way, Keith just shrugs.

“Your machine, your call,” he says, and then he smirks. “_Sir._”

*

Shiro lets the others debate among themselves who should sit where on the hoverbike and why, because _god_ it’s good to have his hands on his hoverbike again.  
  
He sits down behind the controls and it’s like meeting an old friend.

_This_ he knows. _This_ is as clear in his mind as ever. There’s no haze between him and his instincts to fly, to go fast and high, to cut curves through the air, and he’s so relieved he feels almost giddy.

Shiro’s hands shake a little when he holds them out to test them, though, and he drops them quickly, just in case anyone else saw. It’s alarming, how little strength he has right now. He feels like he overslept by weeks, but that’s not going to stop him. He just has to recalculate.

Once Keith and the cadets are arranged behind him—Hunk looking slightly sick in the middle, Lance behind him hanging on to his shoulders, Pidge in front of him tucked behind Shiro, and Keith perched up on the back closest to the tail, ready to lean if he needs to—he fits the borrowed goggles over his eyes and pushes the ignition. 

The whine and lift of the turbines, the rev and thrum of the engine, the vibration that shakes up through the whole machine and into his body like it’s almost _alive_—

It fills him with a rush of joy. 

Shiro eases it up to speed and then they’re off, eating up ground, the wind whipping at them. He keeps his lines smooth, doesn’t throttle up too much, keeps half an ear out for any calls from Keith or noises of distress from his other passengers. He keeps the heading clear in his mind, Keith’s instructions simple and definite.

_Ten degrees south of the big point, and then southeast by east until the boulders_. 

But he also lets himself drink in the air and the velocity and the huge blue sky.

He grins until his teeth get cold.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Various Storms by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> Learning about food in space was (wait for it) an absolute treat! Seriously, check out this fun video and find out why astronaut ice cream is terrible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E36F4XG5zcY&feature=emb_title
> 
> And if you didn't know that you can fly a jet in the shadow of a lunar eclipse, now you do! The Concorde did it in the 1970s and again in the 1990s and Lance and I both agree that it was cool.


	15. Venture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New year! Have a fic update to kick off 2021 :) 
> 
> Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday time. Enjoy All The Things!
> 
> Special thanks as always to my beta Sarah, who not only corrects my typos, but calms me the hell down when I start using words that aren't actually English (...yet). HUGS <3

Playlists:  
[Mood](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gAZRWeNaMOTOjTLiV7Awd?si=0zgHbCVHSZiwHK8Q8pbpiw)  
[Garrison Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/612rCebNNuB6ppcZMBjJKB?si=-nPABS8eTNuX83tFqJLlhg)  
[Save Each Other](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YgklJnsovuO9EFhwDUBnO?si=lmgOGurTS72EVFWgyyhStQ)  
[Defend the Universe](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jIe1FGChdQ82SC1TK02Mn?si=bqmrHeysQOytYEkPQnbCbw)

**15: Venture**

How big  
How blue  
How beautiful

*

Lance makes at least three separate sarcastic comments about Keith’s ‘radar’ sense before Keith snaps back that _I don’t have radar, I never said I have radar, that’s not how radar works_.

“I’m just saying, we shouldn’t rely on anyone’s hunches, or whatever, to find this Voltron,” Lance says. “We should let Hunk work his science magic.”

“‘Science magic’ is an oxymoron,” Keith points out.

“Hey, if anyone here is an oxymoron, it’s you.”

Keith just growls, shoves his arms across his chest so he doesn’t do anything violent.

Hunk and Pidge are thirty feet out in front, not so much leading the way as weaving back and forth in a vaguely forward direction, trying to decipher the readings on Hunk’s Voltron finder.

Only too happy to let Lance go bother Pidge with questions, Keith hangs back, stays close to Shiro.

“So,” Shiro begins.

“If you say the word ‘radar’—” Keith warns.

“Wasn’t going to,” Shiro says, mildly. “I was going to ask you how it works when you follow that energy you were talking about.”

Keith can’t tell if Shiro really believes him, but he’s being nice about it.

“Just watch,” Keith says.

He squints against the light, concentrates for a moment, finds the feeling. And then he points.

In front of them, not paying any attention to Keith and Shiro at all, Hunk announces, “Okay, wait, no. Yes! That way!” and points in the same direction as Keith’s outstretched arm.

Keith throws a look at Shiro to say, _see?_

Shiro closes his open mouth with a click.

“That’s… pretty amazing,” he says.

“It’s not, really,” Keith says. “It’s only ever led me around in circles. I can follow it to this area, but then it’s just cloud catching. I can’t get much closer to whatever centre it’s coming from. I can’t use it to find the source.”

“What does it feel like?”

“It’s kind of—magnetic?” Keith tries, and then sighs. “I don’t know. It’s like being a little bit dizzy, but in a specific direction.”

“You… told me about this before,” Shiro says, realizing. “Do you remember? When we were out on the hoverbikes that last weekend before the launch, you said you felt something pulling you. I thought you were being, you know. Metaphorical. But you weren’t, were you?”

“When am I ever metaphorical?” Keith says, sourly.

He can feel Shiro watching him closely.

“What is it?” Shiro says. “Something else is on your mind.”

“_Nothing_,” he says, too quickly. Then he sighs. “It’s just. My dad. He knew something about this place.”

He can hear Shiro’s inbreath of surprise.

“But how could he have—”

“I don’t know! Most of the stuff I put up on the board is _his _research. I found all those papers and maps in the attic. And the scanner tech and, and the _explosives?_ That was all stashed, like he was _saving_ it for something. I only found it because I went around the house with a damn crowbar—”

“Wait,” Shiro says, brows furrowing sharply. “What do you mean ‘explosives’?”

Keith stutters to a halt, derailed.

_Right_. He’d completely forgotten to explain that part.

“I… don’t think you were awake at that point,” Keith says. He wishes he could leave it at that, but there’s growing alarm in Shiro’s eyes. 

“What _happened?_” he says, and Keith can tell Shiro is imagining something worse than the reality, though maybe not by much.

Jesus. Where to start?

“…My dad had bombs hidden under the floorboards at home,” he says, and winces as Shiro’s eyebrows shoot up in shock.

“_What?_"

“Look, I _know_ it’s crazy!” Keith says, holding his hands up in surrender. “I have no idea why he had them or how he got them! And then when I heard the Garrison reporting an unknown object over the radio, I just… grabbed them and _went_. I didn’t think I would actually use them, but the Garrison had a full quarantine camp set up around your crash site. Guards, contamination protocols, perimeter patrols, ATRs doing rounds—_everything_. It was serious lockdown and I had to get in there somehow. So I… I set them off half a mile away as a distraction. Used them all up. That’s how I got in, and it’s the only reason we got away.” 

“_Where on Earth_ did you learn to use something like that?” Shiro says.

“…There was a hidden note.”

Shiro stares.

“Your dad left a note about how to use explosives.”

“He hid it really well,” Keith says, feeling oddly defensive. “He was really careful. I wasn’t meant to find it. That’s what I _mean_. Dad was trying to be ready for something, and he didn’t want anyone to know.”

Shiro seems to collect himself.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, so… your dad suspected something. About what’s out here.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “When I was a kid, we would go outside and stargaze together and he always used to tell me this rhyme, sort of. He always said it the same way. _That’s_ the heading I told you, the one that helped me find this place. Dad called this whole area ‘Neverland’ in his notes, like a codename. He _knew_. My whole life, he must have known. I don’t know what it means.”

He doesn’t even contemplate mentioning what else was hidden with those instructions, the words on that second slip of paper that he still doesn’t let himself think about too deeply.

He doesn’t know what any of it means.

“Maybe all it means is that we’re on the right track,” Shiro says. “Maybe your dad found this place the same way you did, and just didn’t know what to expect. If this Voltron weapon has such a powerful effect on the environment around it, then it’s bound to attract some attention. He must have followed the energy, too.”

“He… never mentioned doing that,” Keith says, feeling himself frowning as he thinks over everything he’d found in his dad’s notes. “And you don’t feel it. Do you?” 

“…No,” Shiro admits. His smile gets a little crooked. “But then again, I’m not the one who’s been living right next door to it.”

He rests his hand on Keith’s shoulder for a moment—his left hand, broad and warm—and Keith feels reassured despite himself.

“Come on, dudes! Catch up!” Lance calls from up ahead. “Man, for a couple of ace pilots you two don’t really keep up the pace, do you?”

They share a look.

Shiro is far too mature and kind and dignified, so he just keeps a straight face and starts walking, the slight twitch in his jaw the only crack in his composure.

Keith refuses to be any of those things in this moment. He rolls his eyes, and he rolls them hard. 

*

“_Ow! Mary Mother of_—How are you doing this?”

Lance stumbles over another rock, hand braced against the tunnel wall like a lifeline.

“You put one foot in front of the other,” Keith says. “It’s not that hard.”

“Maybe for _you_,” Pidge grumbles. “How can you possibly see anything right now? Gotta say, this isn’t a very good shortcut.”

“Yeah, man,” Hunk says. “It’s pitch black in here. Could’ve warned us.”

It’s true that the light from the entrance had faded dramatically once they’d rounded the first few turns, but seriously?

“I didn’t warn you because it’s not that dark,” Keith says. He can feel that familiar itch of impatience under his skin. “And it’s really not that much farther. Once we’re out of this, then we can get access to the area where I found the caves with all the lion markings. That’s right where the readings are telling us to go.”

Keith has learned to trust his gut. He _knows_ they’re going to find something there. 

“And this is really the best way there?” Shiro asks, making his way cautiously across the uneven cave floor. Keith could tell he hadn’t liked the idea of leaving the hoverbike behind and going through the tunnel like this, but he’d deferred to Keith’s suggestion. “We couldn’t have stayed above ground?”

“I second that,” says Hunk. “Also, I thought I saw… _eyes_. There might be some kind of animal in here with us. Can we go back? I’d like to go back.”

Keith shakes his head, then remembers—apparently—that no one can see it.

“We really can’t afford to,” he says. “Staying topside means a two or three hour hike over some really bad terrain. With no shade. Even at this time of year, that’s no joke. Believe me, I’ve tried to find a better way around, but there isn’t one that won’t lose us too much time or break someone’s ankle.”

“Wait, I’m still confused,” Lance says. “Why couldn’t we just take the hoverbike again? Couldn’t we just, y’know, _hover_ over all that stuff?”

“You know hoverbikes don’t actually fly, right?” Pidge says. “Those turbines create push, not lift.”

“And like I said,” Keith says, trying not to grind his teeth. “Really bad terrain.” 

“Sorry Lance,” Shiro says, “but they’re right. I’m not willing to risk a slipdraft trying to go over those boulders. The whole thing could flip, with us still on it. It’s not safe. On foot is the best option we’ve got.”

“I miss my PD,” Hunk sighs. “Could really use a flashlight right now. And some Kingpin Blocks Saga.”

“Wait,” Keith says, stopping. “You _don’t_ have your PD with you? _None of you_ have your PDs with you?”

“_Of course_ we don’t,” Hunk says, like Keith is being obtuse on purpose. “It’s a weekday.”

“Cadet PDs are confiscated and secured until weekends, as per regulation,” Pidge says, frowning. “I know it’s been a while since you were at the Garrison, but _really?_”

“And what about you?” Lance says, sounding amused. “A survivor-guy like you doesn’t have his PD? Just going to use your super senses to see in the dark?”

“I never had a PD,” Keith says, though he doesn’t mention that it’s because he could never afford one on his own and he’d never lived with a foster family who’d been willing to fork over that kind of cash for his sake. Besides that, he could never see the point. He’d forgotten the Garrison’s draconian rules about personal devices and network access, too. God, but he doesn’t miss that place. “And give it a rest already with the super radar senses, or whatever,” he adds. “It was never funny.”

“I could use my laptop?” Pidge suggests, maybe just to stop Lance from replying. “Some light would be better than no light, at this point.”

“Wait a sec,” Shiro says. “I can’t believe I forgot—”

Keith sees him dig into the pockets on his dad’s old work belt. There’s a click and then a beam of light floods the floor of the cave, leaving them all blinking. 

“_Oh thank goodness_,” Hunk says. “Oh man, that’s so much better. I kept imagining the _worst things_. Like when you’re swimming where you can’t see the bottom and you just keep thinking _there could be anything underneath you_…”

“Stop it!” Lance says. “Now _I’m_ imagining it!”

“Look, I didn’t think it was that bad,” Keith says, feeling foolish and defensive and unable to put the brakes on his irritation. “I’ve been through here more than once, it was never a problem for me. I would’ve told everyone to just bring a light if I thought no one would have their PDs or if anyone had _said_—”

“Keith, it’s fine, really,” Shiro says. He moves to take point, lighting the way for everyone else. “I’m the one who had a light the whole time and didn’t use it right away. And besides, it’s _your_ flashlight, so actually, you’re the one who’s solved it.”

The brief grin he flashes at Keith eases his raised hackles, and not for the first or even the hundredth time Keith marvels at how easily Shiro can just… _disarm_ a situation.

Keith wishes he had any idea how to do that. 

After that, the pace can pick up and it really doesn’t take them long to get through the tunnel. The clear blue sky reappearing at the end is a welcome sight, even for Keith.

They’re barely back in daylight before Hunk’s Voltron scanner is chirping again, more insistently than ever. The signal is so much stronger here and Hunk has no problem finding their next lead. The little black box in Hunk’s hand is pointing them straight to another cave, not far up ahead, one that Keith knows has more petroglyphs than any other. Just like he predicted.

Pidge turns to him, looking both surprised and impressed.

“Okay, I take it back,” he says, and he grins. “Turns out this was an awesome shortcut.”

*

Sunburst shapes and river curves, all carved deeply into the stone of the walls, the floor, the ceiling. And all the lions, stately and mysterious. It’s gratifying to hear the others exclaim over the markings, and Keith feels maybe unreasonably proud of having found this place first, on his own.

He’s always liked this cave best, and not just because the petroglyphs are the oldest looking and most numerous of all the places he’s found them. There’s a particular smell here, something wet and fresh and sharp that he’s always found intriguing. There’s water somewhere close, there must be. He can’t see it—and he’s never been able to find it, no matter how thoroughly he’s clambered over the rock outcroppings surrounding this place—but he can tell from the moisture in the air, from the way the walls have always felt just a little damp to the touch.

Even Lance seems captivated by the petroglyphs, leaning in close to the cave walls, running his hands over them. 

That’s when the carvings in the stone start to _shine_, somehow, to blaze a bright blue, and it spreads, fissuring the rock all around them with light—

—then the cave floor collapses out from under them and they’re dropped head over heels, yelling and flailing.

*

Keith jerks himself up out of the shallow water, choking and disoriented. He panics for a moment, shoving his sodden hair out of his eyes so he can see, but the others are there next to him, coughing and spluttering and soaked and groaning. Shiro is sitting up, rubbing his shoulder and grimacing, but he meets Keith’s eyes and nods, confirming wordlessly that he’s alright. 

Despite the chorus of pained and confused noises—_what the hell happened_ and _ow jeez_ and _where the heck are we_ and _I think I busted something_—no one seems seriously hurt.

They’re okay.

They’d fallen into some kind of… underground stream? They’d been tumbled and dumped down into some wider space far beneath where they’d been, the stream that carried them emptying from the ceiling down into the hip-deep pool they’re all sitting in. Not exactly a soft landing.

“_Whoa_,” Lance says, long and low, and it’s the awe in his voice that makes Keith follow his gaze.

The hollowed out space they’re in is dim, but it’s impossible to miss the massive shape seated at the other end—_unbelievably_ large, big as a building, towering up to the high rocky ceiling—enclosed by a geometric lattice of blue energy. 

A lion, caged in a perfect sphere of light.

A giant… _mechanical_ lion. Made of some kind of blue and silver metal. Dormant yellow eyes. Unmoving, yet somehow… watchful.

All the hair stands up along Keith’s neck, along his arms. He shudders, and it’s not just because of the cold water running down his back under his shirt.

_This is it_, he thinks, his stomach flipping with a rush of anticipation. _This_ is the source, he knows it is. Deep in his spine, almost on the edge of his senses, the familiar feeling _grows_—

Keith is already halfway to the thing, transfixed. Lance and the others follow him, just as thunderstruck.

Of all the things Keith expected to find, he hadn’t pictured _this_. It’s the kind of thing right out of the wild, pulpy sci-fi novels his dad had gotten him hooked on as a kid. 

The lion isn’t merely mechanical, he realizes as he gets closer. The lines of it are… _wrong_ for it to be just a machine. It’s not exactly organic either. Keith can’t put his finger on it, but it doesn’t seem like an animal—some kind of metal lifeform?—and it doesn’t seem like it was only built to imitate one. The structure it’s resting its haunches on has markings on it like conduits, like circuits, like veins.

This thing is no mere machine. Whatever tech was used to build it—however many ages ago it was made—it must be very, _very_ advanced. He feels smaller and smaller the closer he gets to it, his chin tilting back more and more to look up at it, until an uncomfortable niggling sense of insignificance settles in the pit of his belly, and he swallows, humbled.

The last time he felt like this, he’d been standing in front of the _Calypso_ shuttle craft, being offered a future he didn’t dare believe he deserved.

“Is this it?” Pidge wonders aloud. “Is _this_ the Voltron?”

“It… must be,” Shiro says.

“This is what’s been causing all of this crazy energy out here,” Keith says.

Their voices echo off the stone walls of the cavern and—

_Don’t let anyone get into the cavern_.

_This_ is the place his dad’s note was talking about, he realizes, and it finally hits Keith with the full force of understanding.

His dad hadn’t just been trying to discover its secret, he’d been trying to _protect_ it. His dad must have known exactly what was here, that this lion must be the source. As often as he could, he’d aimed the telescope this way to keep an eye on the area. And he’d wanted this to stay hidden. His dad had been willing to find and use illegal scanning equipment—Jesus, he’d been willing to use those explosives, to risk serious jail time, even serious injury—to do that.

_Don’t let anyone get a signal out, everything depends on it._

Had his dad known anything about the Voltron weapon? Christ, had he known about the _aliens?_ About the threat of them, somewhere beyond the solar system?

_Keep Keith safe._

What else had his dad known? What else had his dad not told him?

_K will come back if she can._

It hits Keith in the chest like a blow.

_Dad,_ he thinks, and he doesn’t know if he’s praying or pleading. _Were you ever going to tell me? Were you ever going to explain this? _

And there’s the final fact. No matter how much his dad had wanted this place to remain undiscovered, Keith had been _pulled_ here—_is still being pulled_, even now. He can feel it tilting something inside him, a subtle, willful grip on his spine.

What does it all _mean?_

His mind reels, and he’s drawn inexorably forwards, the need for answers burning under his skin. He gets as close as he can to the feet of the lion, right up to where the pattern of the luminous blue sphere earths itself.

“It’s some kind of forcefield,” he calls to the others.

Distantly, he hears Lance say something about the eyes of the lion following him, and Shiro answering him in a tone that gently suggests he’s imagining things, but honestly? Keith doesn’t think that Lance is all that wrong.

There’s something distinctly _alive_ about this thing. 

His hands come up against the sphere of light, and it doesn’t occur to him until after he’s already touching the strange surface of it that this might be a bad idea. He supposes he’s read enough sci-fi to know better, but nothing happens. It’s solid, absolutely solid—smoother than glass and somehow warm and cool at the same time—and it won’t let him in.

“I wonder how we get through this,” he says to himself.

Lance slouches up next to him, hands in pockets.

“Maybe you just have to knock,” he says, and reaches out to rap a knuckle against it, like this ancient alien marvel is just a friend’s dormitory door.

Keith opens his mouth to tell him off—

There’s a hollow sound as Lance makes contact once, twice—

There’s a _spark_—

*

Shiro is kicking himself. He should have stopped them.

He’d been too caught up in his own amazement, too far away from the lion to do anything when first Keith and then Lance both reach out to touch the forcefield—

It _evaporates_, the whole glowing sphere dissolving away with an almost soundless rush of indrawn air. Then light spreads from beneath the lion’s feet, brighter and bluer than ever, and it floods the lines on the floor beneath it, the whole structure beginning to shake and thrum, _activated_— 

And the giant machine lion _wakes_, eyes flaring bright with golden light, head rising from its inert bow. It _growls_, so deep and resonant that it fills the whole cave, echoing around the chamber.

Shiro recoils instinctively as something _touches his mind_, flooding his awareness with images, a rush of light and memory—

_Flying up into the sky, an arc of blue light_—

_That light joined by four others, a formation of purple red green yellow blue rising and coming together_—

_A great burst of light and power, a synthesis, a melding_—

_A colossus, astride the stars, a great burning sword gripped in the mouth of one lion-headed fist_—

_A warrior, eyes blazing like the hearts of galaxies_—

_Voltron_.

The visons fade as completely and as swiftly as they’d overtaken him, leaving in their wake nothing at all except a kind of… residue of knowledge. Shiro doesn’t know how, but he understands what he saw, at least a little.

“…Did everyone just _see _that?” Lance says, dazed.

“Voltron is a robot!” Hunk bursts out. “Voltron is a huge, _huge_ awesome robot!”

“And this thing is only part of it!” Pidge adds. “I wonder where the rest of them are.”

“This is what they’re looking for,” Shiro says, understanding.

_This_ is what the Galra want.

Voltron isn’t just a powerful weapon, _it’s a living, composite being_. It’s _intelligent_. It can _reach into people’s minds_. 

“Incredible…” Keith breathes, and Shiro can only agree.

It leaves him feeling giddy. Amazed. Excited.

And beneath that, he feels a little sick. 

At first, he can’t fathom where the second feeling is coming from. The visions had seriously startled him, but they hadn’t hurt him. As overwhelming as the experience had been, he doesn’t even feel disoriented now that it’s over. The opposite, in fact, like he’s in _exactly_ the right place, like he _should be here_. Whatever had touched his mind had done it cleanly, gently, without forcing anything. Presented and then withdrawn. There had been no intrusion, no—

Violation.

Some subconscious part of him had expected violation.

The sick feeling is his body coming down from a rush of dread that hadn’t even been fully realized, unclenching from a horror that never came.

But there’s nothing of the Galra here, nothing that even reminds him of the Galra. Nothing at all familiar, nothing recognized-yet-unremembered from that black hole of lost days. Everything about the giant lion in front of them, everything he’d seen about Voltron in the visions, it tells him that the Galra had no part in making it, nor in placing it here on Earth.

He gives a long, shaky exhale, and lets the fear leave him. 

He doesn’t even flinch that badly when the lion lowers its great head and crouches, chin on the ground, and opens its mouth in invitation. 

Lance rushes in like he’s being called by name.

Hunk and Pidge race to follow him, and Shiro doesn’t even try to stop them. Keith holds back just long enough for Shiro to catch up with him. They share a look—there’s so many things flitting across Keith’s face that Shiro can hardly register it all—and then they go into the dark throat of the lion together.

*

Lance is the worst fucking pilot.

“_You—!_” Keith yells, holding on for dear life as the g-forces tear him from side to side, “_—are the worst! Pilot!_”

Crammed all together into the lion’s head-slash-cockpit, still uncomfortably wet from their crash landing in the pool, everyone is screaming. Lance is crowing with joy like a goddamned loon while the lion turns impossible somersaults in the air at speeds that should be turning them inside out.

More inside out. Hunk looks like he’s about to fully invert.

Shiro had wedged his ankle around Keith’s to help brace him, but it only does so much to stop him from being smashed into the walls and everyone else.

Keith wants very badly to just wrest the controls from Lance’s hands, but—

The fact is, the lion hadn’t knelt to him. The forcefield hadn’t given way at his touch. The petroglyphs hadn’t lit up under his scrutiny. Whenever Lance says that the lion is ‘telling’ him something, Keith doesn’t hear or sense a thing.

The lion hadn’t chosen him, and it’s petty as hell, but that… stings. 

This was his secret, his mission.

_You brought me here_, he thinks. _I’m the one you called out to. I’m the one who’s been searching for you_.

The lion doesn’t answer him, just keeps hurtling over the red earth with an exuberance that’s literally dizzying.

“Wait, it says there’s an alien ship approaching Earth,” Lance announces, as the lion finally levels off and rockets upwards with purpose. “I think we’re supposed to stop it.”

“_What did it say, exactly?_” Pidge demands.

“It’s not like it’s saying _words_,” Lance clarifies, or doesn’t. “More like feeding ideas into my brain. Kind of.”

“Well, if this thing is the weapon they’re coming for, why don’t we just—I don’t know—give it to them?” Hunk suggests. “Maybe they’ll leave us alone. Sorry lion, nothing personal.”

Next to him, Keith feels Shiro tense more and more with each word.

“_You don’t understand_,” Shiro says, tone sharp. “These monsters spread like a plague throughout the galaxy, destroying everything in their path. There’s no bargaining with them. They won’t stop until everything is _dead_.”

There’s a ringing silence. Hunk looks cowed. 

“…Oh,” he says, sheepishly. “Never mind, then.”

Shiro might have said something else, but he stops, transfixed.

The lion’s projected field of vision is as clear as if there were nothing between them and the outside. Shiro is the first to see it, but a moment later the rest of them realize that the clouds are just _gone_ and the sky around them has dropped away to black. The lion is already arcing high over the curve of the Earth towards the night side, daylight left behind as a remnant glimmer of gold marking the edge of the world.

Keith feels his breath catch, and he understands Shiro’s silence.

He’d imagined this moment so often since he was a child, playing it out in his mind like he’d seen it in movies and news videos. He’d pictured every second of what it would be like to leave the ground behind this completely. Short flights in the little subsonic training planes they give cadets don’t hold a candle to this. His _wildest dreams_ don’t even compare, and for the last ten months he’s watched distant launches rising up and disappearing into the haze of the sky and told himself to stop dreaming. He thought he’d lost his chance, and lost it forever.

The enormity of the planet as it shrinks below them hits him somewhere deep, deeper than he’d known could be reached.

The home of humanity—_all of human history_—is below him, on one fragile ball of rock wrapped in a gauze of oceans and vapour. A miracle, spinning through the empty black. 

Keith has had his head down for so long, focused so narrowly on the hard reddish contours of the desert under his feet—has spent his whole damn life landlocked in dusty, dry, dusk-coloured places—that the sheer vivid dazzling _blueness_ of the Earth from above is startling. 

It’s so beautiful, it hurts.

In that moment, he doesn’t care that the lion didn’t choose him. It doesn’t matter. He got to see this. He got to be here, side by side with Shiro, high above the world.

The lion steers them towards the stars, so much more bright than they’d ever been from the ground. Without the atmosphere in the way, it’s like a veil has been lifted, and they seem so much clearer, so much… _closer_.

And then suddenly it’s not just an optical trick. The stars before them are actually warping, _distorting_—

Something big—something _huge_, something that dwarfs even the lion—slams into being right in front of them, half a city worth of metal and bulk just _there_.

A ship, coming right for them.

_An alien warship_, bristling with what Keith knows on sight are serious armaments.

Keith hears Shiro’s hissed inhalation, senses the way his whole body locks up.

“_They found me_,” Shiro says, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud, and the dread in his voice drops something cold into the pit of Keith’s stomach. 

Something about the sharpened, brutal lines of the thing makes Keith think he understands why Shiro looks so haunted. _Hunted_.

And then the ship opens fire.

*

For the second time in less than an hour, all Shiro can think of is how foolish he’s been.

He’d let his guard down. He’d let himself feel _safe_—

The Galra warcruiser fills the world, fills his mind from edge to edge with fear and failure and _it’s my fault, it’s my fault they’re here_—

But for the second time, the lion defies his every expectation.

When the Galra ship unleashes a full broadside of some kind of beam weapon from its flank, Lance—or maybe even the lion itself—twists and lunges to avoid getting hit like it’s _easy_.

When Lance punches at the controls and says, “Let’s try _this!_” like he’s in a VR game, the lion blasts the warcruiser with a laser _from its mouth_ like that’s a perfectly natural thing for it to do.

_An alien warship_, Shiro thinks, dazed and dizzy as the lion ducks below fire and swoops close to score the side of the ship open with its claws like the hull is only tinfoil. Flame and decompressed gas bloom from the gouges, and it hits him in a giddy rush that _we have an alien warship too_. 

His heart is beating hard, but it’s not because he’s afraid.

“Nice job, Lance!” he says, while the others cheer and whoop.

It’s not hard to lure the warcruiser away from Earth after that, and seeing that hulking mass veer away from the planet is such a relief that Shiro lets out a breathy laugh. Next to him, Keith does the same, and they spare a grin at each other as the lion accelerates out into interplanetary space.

Lights blur past them, small and dim, whether asteroids or the other debris in orbit around the sun, it’s impossible to tell. In front of him at Lance’s right elbow, Pidge is staring out and muttering ferociously under his breath that _this velocity shouldn’t even be possible_ and _this is against the laws of physics—_

And it strikes Shiro that Pidge is right. This speed is crazy. This speed is _wrong_.

Are they out beyond Mars and into the belt _already?_

It’s hard to gauge out here in the black of the ecliptic, but everything Shiro knows in his gut about spaceflight tells him that this is faster than anything should be able to travel.

Pidge suddenly makes a stifled noise and points, and Shiro sees it too. In the far, far distance winks the tiny, bright, yellowish double-disc shape of what can only be Saturn and its rings, drifting away past and then behind them. 

He’s not a physicist, not even close—he’s always understood motion through his hands and eyes, through his body, not through the math of it—but a pang of something like hysteria washes over him as undeniable evidence hits home. Of all the bodies in the system, you can’t mistake Saturn for anything else, and you can’t—_you can’t_—get from Earth to here in a matter of minutes like they just did— 

_Faster than light_.

He doesn’t have time to reel, though, because they’re somehow travelling faster than light and the warcruiser is still right behind them, _keeping pace_.

“Holy—They’re _gaining_ on us!” Pidge says.

“It’s weird,” Lance says. “They’re not trying to shoot us, they’re just… _chasing_.”

“Okay, _seriously?_” Hunk says, voice pitching up with alarm. “Now we think having aliens chasing us is _good?_”

_They want their prize weapon captured_, Shiro thinks. _Captured and undamaged_.

He doesn’t say it out loud, doesn’t want to give voice to the awful possibility of being back in Galra hands, of giving even a piece of Voltron over to them. Even at these incredible speeds, and even with the almost casual way the lion tore the warcruiser open, whoever is in command of it can afford to choose their moment. They can wait for backup. They can wait for a mistake. There isn’t really anywhere to hide. 

“Where _are_ we?” Keith asks, but that’s when something else comes into view.

No mere distant speck this time, another planetary body looms up close in front of them, its disc striped black and silver with albedo and shadow.

“Edge of the solar system,” Shiro says, “and that’s… Kerberos.”

There’s not a shred of doubt. He would know that frozen little world anywhere, with its pole-to-pole ice plains and distinct smattering of craters. He knows that if they could see through the back of the lion’s head, somewhere nearby there would be dark-bright Pluto in its push-pull dance with Charon and the other moons. All of them darkened here and there with the dust of eons, and none so richly as the body before them.

Shiro still doesn’t have words for what it had felt like to finally set foot on a distant moon.

He’d dreamed for _so long_ about getting to touch earth that’s not Earth—he’d _strived_ for it, yoked his whole life to it—that the thrill of the moment when it finally happened had struck him dumb. No ‘first step for all mankind’ speech, not even verbal confirmation with his crew still in the shuttle, not in that first moment of contact. Just the cold light, the black sky, the nitrogen ice under his boots, his own breathing in the IEVA suit… and the silence.

Not just the silence of near-zero atmosphere. A silence inside him. He’d felt so…

Still.

For seven years, he’d had that constant torsion inside him, that black knot of urgency that drove him forwards before it was too late, drove him farther, higher, _faster_—

Moments in flight, moments in orbit, moments out between the planets had been a reprieve from that, but never for long, never enough.

And then… he’d made it. To the outer solar system, to another world. He’d gotten that far, and he would leave a mark, and his name would be somewhere other than on his own sad, someday grave. 

Standing on Kerberos had been the only time since the diagnosis that he could remember feeling at peace. Deep down, all the way to the centre of him, at peace. 

And then he’d been torn away from it, lifted into darkness by a terrible purple light.

Shiro watches his moon pass out of sight, unable to look away until it’s gone.

*

Keith has been thinking of Kerberos as a place of death for so long that it’s hard to think of it as anything else.

For a moment, he remembers the rolling green grass of the cemetery where his dad is buried. The huge old trees sheltering the tombstones and the small wildflowers that tuft up between the rows of stones every spring. Nothing really beautiful, just a small green pocket of quiet tucked away from noise and time.

Compared to that, the frozen surface of Pluto’s fourth moon seems utterly bleak and sterile, ageless and changelessly cold. It would have been a horrible resting place. Keith shivers, unable to help imagining it.

He sees the way Shiro’s eyes lock on to Kerberos as the lion slips past it, and he wonders what Shiro’s remembering. He wonders how it feels to see the place where everyone thinks you died. The way Shiro is staring at it, though, there’s no grimness, no fear, just…

Longing. 

Keith isn’t sure what he would have expected, but not that. He wants to ask, but—

There’s still the huge hostile ship looming behind them.

Now is not the time.

In front of him, Hunk is muttering a litany of _what do we do, what do we do, what do we do_— 

Then, for the second time, the stars distort in front of them.

Keith feels himself brace for the sight of another Galra ship—

But it’s not a ship, it’s a circle of light.

It spreads in front of them from a single point like a firework, a glistening spiral of pale blue-purple-teal starlight that flowers outwards until it’s _huge_, until it fills the lion’s entire field of vision. It’s... it’s a _structure_, Keith realizes. Like a mirror, like a ring, edged with a frame of light in the same kind of conduit patterns that they saw in the cavern.

“_What is that?_” Hunk moans, like he’s one more weird-thing-appearing-in-space away from losing it.

“This may seem crazy,” Lance says, “but I think the lion wants us to go through there.”

There’s a loaded silence. They all stare at it, at what can only be some kind of _gateway_.

“…Where does it go?” Pidge says, sounding small.

“I…I don’t know,” Lance admits, and it’s strange to hear him so serious. “Shiro, _you’re_ the senior officer here. What should we do?”

Keith sees more than hears Shiro take a deep breath, face flickering in consideration for only a moment before his expression firms. 

“Whatever’s happening, the lion knows more than we do,” Shiro says. “I say we trust it. But we’re a team now and we should decide together.” 

He looks around at all of them, and they all look around at each other.

It’s clear the gate will take them somewhere beyond the solar system, beyond anything they know. Hopefully, it will take them out of reach of the Galra ship that’s still closing in. Keith can see the determination come over each of them in turn, feels it rise up in himself too. Without saying anything at all, they come to a consensus.

They need to get away. They need to get the lion as far away from Earth as possible. 

”Alright,” Lance says. “I guess we’re all ditching class tomorrow.”

He still sounds skeptical, but he doesn’t hesitate to guide the lion directly towards the centre of the gate’s spiral.

Keith has a single moment to feel the regret rush over him—

_I might not be able to come back_.

The house, the notebooks, the telescope—_shit, the hoverbike_—everything he’s been able to salvage will all be left behind, totally unprotected.

He might not ever get to see his dad’s handwriting again.

He might be leaving behind his only chance to find out more about… about his mom. About himself.

God. He might not ever get a chance to go back to his dad’s grave.

He still hasn’t gone back there, not for years, and the low-level thrum of guilt that he always feels for that surges up and bites into him, _hard_. 

—but Keith pushes it all down.

Whatever he might be leaving behind, Shiro is _alive_.

Shiro is right next to him, and there’s a terrible threat behind them, and _that’s_ what matters right now. Whatever happens, he knows he would follow this man anywhere and he would never regret it.

In a blinding flash of light, the lion enters the gate.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence and the Machine. 
> 
> I can't get over how Keith IS BLOWING THINGS UP IN EPISODE ONE and there are not more questions asked. I *always* have questions about this. I think Shiro would too. 
> 
> Also, I have a few things to answer for, mainly that there are two HUGELY handwaved things in the show and in this fic, and they are 1) language and 2) space travel. A third smaller handwave is 3) Pluto's moon, Kerberos. I'm going to explain a bit about that now. 
> 
> If I think too hard about the fact that all the aliens apparently use languages that are mutually intelligible to characters who are speaking English, but then also sometimes have their own native languages that those characters can't understand ('vrepit sa' and 'klanmuirl' come to mind), it *hurts* me a little bit. Right in my linguistics degree, just above the spleen. 
> 
> Clearly, dealing with different languages is not something that the show cares about enough to even mention (which is Fine), so I've also handwaved it so hard in this fic that my writing arm nearly fell off. Remember that scene in Part 10 where Shiro is speaking with Ulaz IN ENGLISH and then introduces himself formally in Japanese and expects Ulaz to understand everything BUT the Japanese? Yeah, I made faces the entire time I was typing that. But it's Fine. Totally Fine. I'll get to have some fun later when I can subject y'all to the stuff I extrapolated for the Galra language, which will satisfy my need for some plausible morphosyntax to be up in this fic. 
> 
> As far as space travel, the show definitely just ignores any physics that gets in the way of what's cool, and that's also Totally Fine. I dealt with it here by straight up lampshading it. I've grounded what I can in reality--especially in our own solar system where things are in a scale that our human brains can mostly grasp--but went YEEHAW with the rest. Yeah, they're travelling faster than light. It's totally cool somehow, don't even worry about it. Alien tech is just rad like that. I felt like Pidge, at least, would burst into flames if she didn't have something to say about it, though, so I let her have that. 
> 
> Finally, Kerberos. Oh Kerberos. You guys, Pluto's real fourth moon is a tiny lumpy peanut of a world that you could not even stand on. It's 19km long. The best picture we have of it is so comically blurred that it looks like someone's pet rock got into the witness protection program. The beautiful, icy, and not at all peanut-shaped world you see in the show is much more like Charon, Pluto's first moon (and platonic orbital partner; they're tidally locked, but it's not a romantic thing). So I did what I think the show makers did, which is a switcheroo. What I describe is pretty much Charon, but I'm calling it Kerberos. 
> 
> New Horizons did a fly-by of Pluto in 2015. Go check out the hi-def photos of Pluto and Charon, they're amazing.


End file.
